... On signage and in sign-writing specifically, but in typography, lettering and even technical drawings, maps and so on *, when did the arrow become a symbol for directions and ultimately, THE the universal symbol to say "go that-a-way" ? I have seen references to using a foot print shape carved in paving stones (as in "follow the foot prints to get to the brothel") and of course manicules have been used in typesetting since the 1500's, but when did arrows become symbols to show directions.
*as I type I keep thinking of more places they're used.
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Why I am asking? I've worked many with wayfinding signage and it was that work that got me into designing type, so I aways include directional arrows in my fonts. It's just a quirk, because so far, there is no practical purpose in doing so. Right now, I am currently working on a blackletter one and I want some arrow references that fit the style.
It's a fun place for typographers to visit.
https://printinghistory.org/arrow/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/zigiella/2532224046
Thanks.
So, here's where I left it a couple of days ago. I've since been looking at some illuminations showing archers and heraldic sources, thinking of the British Army's Board of Ordinance broad arrow symbol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_arrow
I was parroting the squawk from late lamented design peacock Paul Arthur, who crowed that anyone from a rural upbringing would view a standard arrow with 45° lines as pointing the wrong way because chicken footprints point behind them.
1) Leonard Digges and Galileo Galilei arrows
https://synsemia.org/2011/01/04/arrow-as-a-synsemic-perspective/
2) Pointers (aztec fists, phylacterion...)
https://synsemia.org/2011/01/05/alternatives-to-the-arrow-and-alternative-functions-of-the-arrow/
3) Some "maniculae" (fists)
https://synsemia.org/2010/12/17/633/
4) Daniele Capo on arrows and vectors
https://synsemia.org/2011/05/18/frecce-e-vettori-1/
5) Giovanni Anceschi found an arrow attributed at Sacromonte di Varallo that might have been painted in the first half of XVI century (picture by Riccardo De Franceschi).
http://trin-sites-pub.trin.cam.ac.uk/james/viewpage.php?index=453
a glossed psalter from XII century. We are studying the manuscript, but the sign seems to be used to indicate.
In the same manuscript see also folio 33 recto and folio 35 recto.
The phylakterium says "I'm different from others"
I wonder about precise usage: The early example that Luciano Perondi’s article cites, from 1596, uses arrows as pointers to point to exact spots in an illustration. I’m not sure about the uses above (with the harpoon), do these point to specific lines in the main text?
This got me wondering, what is the relation between the use of the (typographical) arrow from first pointing to a precise location — which would be congruent with the idea of an arrow in the sense of a weapon hitting a target — to indicating a rough, general direction (as seen nowadays on traffic signs etc, and the possibly 16th century painted one above), which is further removed from that literal idea and seems potentially like more of a stretch to make from a physical arrow? I wonder if the former came first & then gradually evolved into the latter.
The Book of Additions (Liber Additamentorum), British Library, Cotton MS Nero D I, fol. 185v
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/illmanus/cottmanucoll/t/011cotnerd00001u00185v00.html
The "De Ventis" of Matthew Paris, E. G. R. Taylor, in Imago Mundi, Vol. 2 (1937), pp. 23-26
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1149830?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Matthew Paris, R Vaughan, Cambridge University Press, 1979
https://books.google.it/books?id=xec7AAAAIAAJ