ABSTRACT
The communicative power of images is extraordinary and exceeds our expectations. This volume has illustrated a vast range of methods and fields of experience through which images can talk and be irreplaceable forms of expression. Every time we delve into the study of visual art, iconography, and writing, we keep discovering the deepest roots of our visual perception and graphic communication. Since the Upper Paleolithic, we have been drawing and coloring images, carving figures, and producing symbols, but for many years these prehistoric artifacts have been underestimated and treated as mere cultural manifestations. Nowadays, thanks to recent research in the field of cognitive studies, we have come to terms with how influential the mental impression of images is in our cognition and communication, after centuries of using of glottographic writing made of letters and logograms, which were thought to be substantially divorced from artistic forms and figurative depictions. Writing was first invented in Mesopotamia and Egypt toward the end of the 4th millennium BC and later in other world regions, and has been used to facilitate communication in highly interconnected and large societies. In our social awareness of today, writing has become the predominant asset in graphic communication relegating other visual forms to lesser importance. This volume has brought our attention to reevaluating the importance of images and the prominent role they play as multimodal vehicles of communication and true wire between writing, human beings, and their visual perception.
