Charles Davidson: Profile

UNIVERSAL COMMUNICATION FOR A UNIVERSAL CHALLENGE

COMMUNICATION DEFINITION
Three essential components lead to successful communication.
1-Knowing the information you are communicating is comprehensible.
2-Knowing the information has reached the your intended audience.
3-Knowing the receiver has understood the information as you have intended.

UNIVERSAL PHYSICAL MEDIUMS FOR MASS COMMUNICATION
Primary types.
1-Telephone
2-Television
3-Radio
4-Internet
5-Postage

SELECTING THE POSTAGE STAMP AS A UNIVERSAL COMMUNICATOR

Picture putting a stamp on an envelope that travels the postal highway from the Belgian Congo to Beverly Hills, from New York City to Nome Alaska. Over oceans and continents, across boundaries and borders into homes and businesses, institutions and government offices. Imagine that the message on your stamp is a beneficial call to action with global dimensions and that message has meaning wherever it travels.

THE MINIATURE POSTER
A Macro-communication.
1-As a miniature poster the stamp requires a finite understanding of graphic communication.
2-Its message must be singular and impacting and uncomplicated.
3-Its symbolism must be universally relevant.
4-It must be so powerful in visual presentation that even in its small scale the viewer is captivated.
5-Its personality must inspire usage.

INSPIRED USAGE
The motivation behind using the stamp grows out of its context and content.
1-The message must be meaningful, compelling and universal.
2-The message must connect to the users beliefs or point of view.
3-It must communicate in familiars images, symbols and language.
4-It must have universal logic.

UNIVERSAL LOGIC
Communication on a worldwide scale.
1-The subject of the message must be universally logical.
2-Its symbolism must be universal.
3-Its message must bridge cultures, religions and political preference.

UNIVERSAL SYMBOLS: CONTEMPORARY and PRIMITIVE.
The stamp face with bite die cut and written message (language of country of origin)
The back of the stamp with support information is brought intimately close to the user of the stamp to moisten gum.
CONTEMPORARY- a circle with diagonal line through its center communicates STOP to people who have been schooled in its meaning. Contemporary symbols also involves profiles of familiar objects from a modern society; car, cigarette, bicycle... These familiar objects, for example a cigarette, seen in concert with a circle/diagonal line, communicate the universal message; STOP SMOKING.
PRIMITIVE symbols are also form oriented such as a crescent moon shape. Such symbols are understood universally and communicate through observation and experience. They can be emotional even inspirational as they may recall the nature or magnitude of the experience. They usually relate to natural forms: bear claw, sun, animal/plant life silouette, waves in water, human skull... Many primitive universal symbols and forms evolved into the first hieroglyph and petroglyph forms of picture communication and are understood through similar personal experiences in a modern society.

For example the familiar form a bite shape in a piece of bread transcend time.

APPLYING A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL AND MESSAGE TO A UNIVERSAL MEDIUM...
(To be continued)
Note from Buck Minister Fuller praising Davidson's vision and presentation.