David Crow studied Communication Media at Manchester Metropolitan University and subsequently worked as a designer in London at the design group Assorted Images and as an Art Director for Island Records before running his own freelance consultancy. As a freelance designer he worked for a range of clients in the cultural sector including Rolling Stones Records, Virgin Records, Phonogram and The Royal Shakespeare Company. He then moved into academic life where he ran the Graphic Arts Department at Liverpool John Moores University for eight years until he returned to Manchester Metropolitan University, where he is currently Head of the School of Design.

This book is a journey through our increasingly visual culture. A journey where we consider how technological change has influenced the way we think, the way we see and the way we communicate. We will look at the way that the development of language has gone hand in hand with the development of technology.

The rise of alphabetic literacy – reading and writing – has reconfigured the way we think and has been a contributing factor to changes in history, religion, gender relations and culture. With the introduction of television, the potency of images was greatly increased. As a result, alphabetic information has faced a strong challenge. The rapid development of screen-based media over the latter half of the 20th century has seen the introduction of an increasingly portable range of digital technologies and with this has come an increasingly image-based use of language. The increasing convergence of the television with the home computer, the video game, the world wide web, the mobile telephone and the digital camera has run in parallel with a reduction in the number of people reading text. Artists, designers, authors, publishers, schools and universities have all had to reassess their approach to language and find new ways of talking to a generation who have a new way of reading.

The trend of mass media communication is toward the visual and we find ourselves in an age where even our written language is becoming more and more visually driven.