Ben Gramann is a Designer at Fat Pencil Studio
In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 & Voyager 2 space probes to study the Outer Solar System and hopefully one day reach Interstellar Space.
In a last minute decision, the team, headed by Carl Sagan, was tasked with attaching a message from Earth onto the probes, in the event that they were intercepted by another life form.
The team produced the Voyager's Golden Phonograph Record, which contained spoken greetings in 55 languages, sounds and pictures of Earth, and 90 minutes of music from all around the world.
This demonstrates the communicative power of pictures and images as a means to transcend language, in order to effectively convey ideas.
Voyager's Golden Phonograph Record
There was also an instructional metal plaque, affixed to the exterior of the probe, which served as a manual on how to play the record.
The design problem was how to visually explain the playing of the phonograph record to an unknown species, when there is no chance of a shared language or alphabet.
The team proceeded to figure out a way to explain the following:
- A system of numbers
- Units of time
- How to play the record
- How to extract images from the sound in the record
- Where the probes are coming from
At Fat Pencil Studio, we engage in visual storytelling. We are often required to look beyond words, resorting to a variety of visual tools, such as icons & symbols, pictures or visual descriptives to convey meaningful information. This is especially important when there is an expertise gap or lack of shared language.