Or is it? There is an idiom that haunts every graphic designer—one that we have heard, ad nauseam, all of our lives. It is:
“A picture is worth a thousand words”…
OR “One picture is worth a thousand words”…
OR “One look is worth a thousand words”…
OR “Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words”…
OR “One picture is worth ten thousand words”…
OR something like that.
It has been identified as both a Chinese Proverb and the headline of a 1920s printing magazine advertisement.
Yeah, it’s not a huge issue, but it’s one of those things that I’d like to get right. Like mistaking “champing at the bit” for “chomping at the bit”—or “I couldn’t care less” for “I could care less.”
Let’s put this puppy to rest. From now on, the phrase is: “One picture is worth ten thousand words.” Or is it?
By Daryl Hepting: The history of a picture’s worth…
By illustrator John Howe: A Picture’s Worth of Words…
By William Safire: ON LANGUAGE; Worth a Thousand Words…
What type of image do I think about when I think about pictures being worth ten thousand words? The image above is Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, one of the many images she made for the federal Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration during the depression in the 1930s.
Posted in APRIL 2016 / Chuck Green is the principal of Logic Arts, a design and marketing firm, a contributor to numerous magazines and websites, and the author of books published by Random House, Peachpit Press, and Rockport Publishers. Contact.
Thoughts?