#cyrilandmethodius

Overview of Visual Communication Design History

Design in communication and lettering has intrigued me since the last lecture. I wanted to further investigate the design of alphabets. Since I am Bulgarian I decided to go back to year 5 history and revisit Cyril and Methodius.

They were two brothers, Byzantine Christian and missionaries. The Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets are the oldest known Slavic alphabets, and were created by the two brothers and their students, to translate the Gospels and liturgical books into the Salvic languages.  The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire and later finalized and spread by disciples Kliment and Naum in the Ohrid and Preslav schools of Tsar Boris l of Bulgaria as a simplification of the Glagolitic alphabet which more closely resembled the Greek alphabet. It was produced to give the country its own type and identity. It also became a more legible and recognisable letter system. The First Bulgarian Empire under Tsar Simeon the Great developed Cyrillic from the Greek letters in the 890s as a more suitable script for church books.  Cyrillic and Glagolitic were used for the Church Slavonic language. Hence expressions such as "И” is the tenth Cyrillic letter" typically refer to the order of the Church Slavonic alphabet; not every Cyrillic alphabet uses every letter available in the script (people would have sounded different even though they were using alphabets constructed from the same script).  The Cyrillic script came to dominate Glagolitic in the 12th century. The literature produced in the Old Bulgarian language soon spread north and became the lingua franca of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Over the course of the following millennium, Cyrillic adapted to changes in spoken language, developed regional variations to suit the features of national languages.

I have found it extremely interesting to investigate how an alphabet can be written and how long the process they take. I have also found it engaging to read about how the same script can be used multiple times to generate different alphabets for different nationalities, which would allow them to have their own identity and differences in the sound of their languages.

Design has been really important in the forming of cultures and type.

Reference links:

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica,“ Saints Cyril and Methodius “, Britannica, viewed: 20/08/2020, URL: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saints-Cyril-and-Methodius

Wikipedia, 2020,“Cyrillic script”, Wikipedia, viewed 20/08?2020, URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script

Wikipedia, 2020, “Early Cyrillic Alphabet”, Wikipedia, viewed 20/08/2020, URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cyrillic_alphabet#:~:text=The%20Early%20Cyrillic%20alphabet%20is,South%20East%20and%20Central%20Europe.