Objects and Spaces: The Visual Language of Graphics

Abstract

There is undoubtedly something like a ‘grammar of graphics’. Various syntactic principles can be identified in graphics of different types, and the nature of visual representation allows for visual nesting and recursion. We propose a limited set of possible ‘building blocks’ for constructing graphic spaces, and a limited set of possible syntactic functions of graphic objects. Based on these ingredients, and the rules for their combination, the syntactic structure of any visual representation can be drawn as a hierarchically nested tree. We claim that the presented visual syntax applies to all types of visual representations.