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Ch.1
Early Sumerian pictographic tablet, c. 3100 BCE. This archaic pictographic script contained the seeds for the development of writing. Information is structured into grid zones by horizontal and vertical division. -
Ch.1
Cuneiform tablet from Umma, c. 2050 BCE. Three workers are paid three bundles a day. The total for six days is fifty-four bundles of reed. -
Ch.1
False door of Sitinteti, Old Kingdom, Sixth Dynasty, 2323–2150 BCE. Tomb of the Lady Sat-tety-lyn. In contrast to the raised images in the center, the hieroglyphs are carved into the surface and contained in a mathematical grid of carved lines. -
Ch.2
Ras Shamra script, c. 1500 BCE. Used for bureaucratic and commercial documents and for myths and legends, the Ras Shamra script, which reduces cuneiform to a mere thirty-two characters, was only recently unearthed in the ruins of the ancient city of Ugarit. -
Ch.2
Bronze Archaic Greek votive miniature chariot wheel, c. 525–500 BCE. A dedication to Apollo is legible through the medium-green patina of this metal wheel, 16 centimeters (6 inches) in diameter, used for worship. -
Ch.2
Etruscan Bucchero vase, seventh or sixth century BCE. A prototype of an educational toy, this rooster-shaped toy jug is inscribed with the Etruscan alphabet. -
Ch1
Random placement and shifting scale signify prehistoric people's lack of structure and sequence in recording their experiences. -
Ch.1
Fremont rock painting from San Raphael Swell, c. 2000–1000 BCE. The Fremont people lived in southern Utah. -
Ch.3
Oracle bone inscribed with chiaku-wen, or bone-and-shell script, c. 1300 BCE. The 128 characters inscribed on this scapula concern a diviner's predictions of calamities during the next ten-day period. -
Ch.3
Four-handled vessel with chin-wen, or bronze script, inscription, eleventh century BCE. Bold, regular strokes are used to form the sixty-four characters of an eight-line dedication, which itself forms a rectangle in the vessel's bottom. -
Ch.3
Li (three-legged pottery vessel), late Neolithic period. The evolution of the calligraphic character Li stemmed from this pot: oracle bone pictograph; bronze script, 1000 BCE; and regular style, 200 BCE. -
Ch.3
Chinese relief tomb sculpture and rubbing, northern Qi dynasty (550–577 CE). Illustrative images from the life of the deceased are captured in stone and with ink on paper. -
Ch.3
Buddhist dedicatory stele, c. 562 CE. This votive limestone tablet illustrates the early Chinese practice of permanently and accurately rendering inscriptions by carving them on stone. -
Ch.4
Page from the Ormesby Psalter, c. early 1300s CE. Decoration, illustration, and initials are joined into a single complex text frame. Red and blue prevail in many late Gothic manuscripts. -
Ch.5
Jack of Diamonds, woodblock playing card, c. 1400. The flat, stylized design conventions of playing cards have changed little in over five hundred years. Visual signs to designate the suits began as the four classes of medieval society. Hearts signified the clergy; spades (derived from the Italian spada [sword]) stood for the nobility; the leaflike club represented the peasantry; and diamonds denoted the burghers. -
Ch.5
Woodblock print of Saint Christopher, 1423. The unknown illustrator depicted the legendary saint, a giant who carried travelers safely across a river, bearing the infant Christ. The inscription below reads: “In whatsoever day thou seest the likeness of St. Christopher/in that same day thou wilt at least from death no evil blow incur/1423.” One of the earliest dated European block prints, this image effectively uses changing contour-line width to show form. -
Ch.5
Johann Gutenberg, pages 146 and 147 from the Gutenberg Bible, 1450–55. The superb typographic legibility and texture, generous margins, and excellent presswork make this first printed book a canon of quality that has seldom been surpassed. An illuminator added the red headers and text, initials, and floral marginal decoration by hand. -
Ch.5
Jan Fust and Peter Schoeffer, page from Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, 1459. The innovative small type is combined with wonderfully intricate printed red and blue initials that evidence the early printer's efforts to mimic the design of the manuscript book. -
Ch.6
Albrecht Pfister (printer), illustration from the second edition of Der Ackerman aus Böhmen (Death and the Ploughman), c. 1463. Death sits as a king on his throne, flanked by a widower and his child on the left and the deceased wife on the right. -
Letter K from a grotesque alphabet, c. 1464. This page is from a twenty-four-page abecedarian block-book that presented each letter of the alphabet by composing figures in its shape.
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Ch.7
Ugo da Carpi (c. 1479–1533), page from Thesauro, c. 1535. This contained a compilation of scripts by Italian writing masters Arrighi, Sigismondo Fanti, and Giovantonio Tagliente. -
Ch.7
Printer's trademark, 1481. Attributed to Andreas Torresanus (1451–1529). One of the oldest symbolic themes, the orb and cross is found in a chamber of Cheops's pyramid at Giza, where it was hewn into stone as a quarry mark. A fairly common design device at this time, it symbolized that “God shall reign over earth.” -
Ch.6
Anton Koberger, pages from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493. The raised hand of God in the initial illustration is repeated over several pages retelling the biblical story of creation. -
Ch.6
Diego de Gumiel, title page for Aureum Opus (Great Works), 1515. The title almost becomes an afterthought in this title page. The use of white-on-black woodblocks and heraldic imagery is typical of early Spanish graphic design. -
Ch.6
Johann Schoensperger (printer), pages from Teuerdank, 1517. The full title of the work translates as “The adventures and a portion of the story of the praiseworthy, valiant, and high-renowned hero and knight, Lord Tewrdannckh.” The flamboyant calligraphic gestures are appropriate for this romantic novel about chivalry. The swashes are carefully placed to animate the pages in the layout of the book. -
Ch.7
Johann Froben (printer) and Hans Holbein (illustrator), title page for Sir Thomas More's Utopia, 1518. Complex in image and tone, this title-page design unites the typography with the illustration by placing it on a hanging scroll. -
Ch.7
Geoffroy Tory, pot cassé emblem, 1524. Later, Tory explained that the broken jar symbolized one's body, the toret or auger symbolized fate, and the book held shut by three padlocked chains signified the book of a life after it is shut by death. -
Ch.6
Lucas Cranach the Younger, broadside, 1551. This commemorative portrait of Martin Luther bears the identification of the illustrator (Cranach's flying snake device) and the block cutter, a craftsman named Jörg, who is identified typographically above the date -
Ch.7
Christophe Plantin, page from Humanae Salutis Monumenta, by Arius Montanus, 1569–72. This religious emblem book features hand-colored copperplate engravings. -
Ch.8
Philippe Grandjean, specimen of Romain du Roi, 1702. Compared to earlier roman fonts, the crisp geometric quality and increased contrast of this first transitional typeface are clearly evident. The small spur on the center of the left side of the lowercase l is a device used to identify types of the Imprimerie Royale. -
Ch.8
John Baskerville, title page for Vergil's Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis (Pastorals, Georgics, and the Aeneid), 1757. Baskerville reduced the design to letterforms symmetrically arranged and letterspaced; he reduced content to author, title, publisher, date, and city of publication. Economy, simplicity, and elegance resulted. -
Ch.9
Thomas Cotterell, twelve lines pica, letterforms, c. 1765. These display letters, shown actual size, seemed gigantic to eighteenth-century compositors, who were used to setting handbills and broadsides using types that were rarely even half this size -
Ch.8
Louis René Luce (designer) and Jean Joseph Barbou (printer), ornaments page from Essai d'une nouvelle typographie, 1771. These meticulously constructed cornices and borders express the authority and absolutism of the French monarchy. -
Ch.8
William Blake, title page from The Book of Thel, 1789. -
Ch.8
Pierre Didot, title page for Lettres d'une Péruvienne (Letters of a Peruvian), by Françoise de Grafigny, 1797 -
Ch.9
The first steam-powered cylinder press, 1814. Koenig's invention caused the speed of printing to skyrocket, while its price dropped considerably. -
Ch.9
Joseph Niépce, photo etching of an engraving of Cardinal Georges D'Amboise, c. 1827. This routine portrait print is the first image printed from a plate that was created by the photochemical action of light rather than by the human hand. -
Ch.9
Joseph Niépce, photo etching of an engraving of Cardinal Georges D'Amboise, c. 1827. This routine portrait print is the first image printed from a plate that was created by the photochemical action of light rather than by the human hand. -
Ch.9
Handbill for an excursion train, 1876. To be bolder than bold, the compositor used heavier letterforms for the initial letter of important words. Oversized terminal letterforms combine with condensed and extended styles in the phrase Maryland Day! -
Ch.11
Jules Chéret, poster for Orphée aux Enfers (Orpheus in Hades), 1879. Chéret evolved toward larger, more animated figures and greater unity of word and image. -
Ch.10
W. J. Morgan and Co., Cleveland, lithographic theater poster, 1884. Montage illustrations become overlapping planes with varied scale and spatial depth. -
Ch.9
W. J. Morgan and Co., Cleveland, lithographic theater poster, 1884. Montage illustrations become overlapping planes with varied scale and spatial depth. -
Ch.11
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, poster, “La Goulue au Moulin Rouge,” 1891. Shapes become symbols; in combination, these signify a place and an event. -
Ch.10
W. J. Morgan and Co., Cleveland, lithographic theater poster, 1884. Montage illustrations become overlapping planes with varied scale and spatial depth. -
Aubrey Beardsley, first cover for The Studio, 1893. Beardsley's career was launched when editor C. Lewis Hine featured his work on this cover and reproduced eleven of his illustrations in the inaugural issue.
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Ch.12
Margaret and Frances Macdonald with J. Herbert McNair, poster for the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, 1895. The symbolic figures have been assigned both religious and romantic interpretations. -
Ch.14
The Beggarstaffs, poster for Robespierre, 1896. As with the design for Don Quixote the actor Sir Henry Irving was not pleased with his image and rejected the poster. -
Ch.12
Gustav Klimt, poster for the first Vienna Secession exhibition, 1898. The large open space in the center is unprecedented in Western graphic design. -
Ch.10
Louis Rhead, title page for The Essay on Walt Whitman, 1900. The Roycroft Press commissioned this design from a prominent graphic designer. -
Ch.12
Peter Behrens, title and dedication pages for Feste des Lebens und der Kunst: eine Betrachtung des Theaters als höchsten Kultursymbols, 1900. A sharp angularity characterizes the title page (left), framed by caryatids. On the right, a dedication to the Darmstadt artists' colony is ornamented with controlled curvilinear rhythms. -
Ch.11
Emmanuel Orazi, poster for La Maison Moderne (The Modern House), 1905. Furniture, objects, clothing, jewelry, and even the woman's hair evidence the totality of the movement. -
Pablo Picasso, Nude, c. 1906–7. The seeds of cubism are contained in the fragmentation of the figure and background spaces into abstracted geometric planes.
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Filippo Marinetti, cover for Zang Tumb Tumb, 1912. The title is a sound poem in itself.
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Ch.13
Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation No. 29, 1912. Kandinsky defined an improvisation as a spontaneous expression of inner character having a spiritual nature. -
Ch.14
Ludwig Hohlwein, fund-raising poster, 1914. A graphic symbol (the red cross) combines with a pictorial symbol (a wounded soldier) in an appeal with emotional power and strong visual impact. -
Ch.15
David and Vladimir Burliuk, pages from Vladimir Mayakovski: A Tragedy, 1914. In an effort to relate visual form to meaning, Russian futurist graphic design mixed type weights, sizes, and styles. -
Ch.14
Lucian Bernhard, poster for a war-loan campaign, 1915. A sharp militaristic feeling is amplified by the Gothic inscription, “This is the way to peace—the enemy wills it so! Thus subscribe to the war loan!” -
Ch.12
The London Underground symbol, revised by Edward Johnston in 1918, is shown in the 1972 version used today. -
Ch.14
E. McKnight Kauffer, poster for the Daily Herald, 1918. This bellwether poster was based on the designer's earlier futurist- and cubist-inspired print of flying birds. -
Hannah Höch, Da—dandy, collage and photomontage, 1919. Images and materials are recycled, with both chance juxtapositions and planned decisions contributing to the creative process.
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Ch.16
Attributed to Johannes Auerbach, first Bauhaus seal, 1919. The style and imagery of this seal—chosen in a student design competition—express the medieval and craft affinities of the early Bauhaus. -
Ch.15
Bart Anthony van der Leck, exhibition poster, 1919. Moored in pictorial art, Van der Leck diverted De Stijl's vocabulary toward elemental images. -
Ch.10
Jan van Krimpen, pages from Deirdre & de zonen van Usnach (Deirdre and the Sons of Usnach), by A. Roland Holst, Palladium Series, 1920. -
Ch.16
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, title page, Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar. This page structure is based on a rhythmic series of right angles. Stripes applied to two words create a second spatial plane. -
Ch.16
Jan Tschichold, display poster for a publisher, 1924. One of the Tschichold's earliest attempts to apply modern design principles, printed in black and gold, proclaims, “Books by Philobiblon are available here in Warsaw.” -
Ch.16
Jan Tschichold, cover for “Elementare Typographie” insert, 1925. A sparse, open functionalism is achieved. -
Ch.18
Théo Ballmer, poster for an office professions exhibition, 1928. Traces of the grid squares used to construct this poster remain as the thin white lines between the letters. -
Ch.15
Vladimir Vasilevich Lebedev, book spread, Tsirk (Circus), 1928. -
Ch.16
Herbert Bayer, cover for Bauhaus magazine, 1928. A page of typography joins the designer's tools and basic geometric forms in a photographic still life. Composed before a camera instead of at a drawing board, this cover achieves a rare integration of type and image. -
Ch.10
Charles Nypels, title page from Don Quichotte, by Miguel de Cervantes, 1929–1931. -
Ch.16
Herbert Matter, Swiss tourism poster, 1934. Angular forms and linear patterns convey a sense of movement appropriate to winter sports. -
Ch.13
Max Ernst, collage from Une semaine de bonté (A Week of Kindness), 1934. Photomechanical printing techniques obliterate cut edges, unifying the image. -
Ch.14
Martinez Ortiz, “Discipline,” poster, c. 1937. This Nationalist poster is a clear expression of brute power. -
Ch.17
Alexey Brodovitch (art director) and Salvador Dalí (illustrator), pages from Harper's Bazaar, October 1938. The forms and texture of the experimental photograph are amplified and complemented by the typographic design. -
Ch.17
Will Burtin, cover for the first issue of Scope, 1941. To signify new “miracle drugs” under development, a color illustration is superimposed over a black-and-white photograph of a test tube. -
Ch.17
Joseph Binder, poster proposal for the U.S. Army Air Corps, 1941. Extreme spatial depth is conveyed by the scale change between the close-up wing and aircraft formation. -
Ch.16
Jan Tschichold, brochure cover for The Pelican History of Art, 1947. The classical symmetry of this design has a power and subtlety rivaling Roman inscriptions and the best work of Baskerville and Bodoni. -
Ch.17
Herbert Matter, advertisement for Knoll Associates, 1948. Photographs of organic chair components combine with flat yellow “shadows” to generate the energy of a Calder mobile. -
Ch.19
Paul Rand, poster for the film No Way Out, 1950. Rand's integration of photography, typography, signs, graphic shapes, and the surrounding white space stands in marked contrast to typical film posters. -
Ch.17
Herbert Bayer, page from the World Geo-Graphic Atlas, 1953. Color coding, symbols, cross sections, maps, and illustrations provide a visual inventory of earth resources. -
Ch.21
Armando Testa, poster for Pirelli, 1954. The strength of a bull elephant is bestowed on the tire by the surrealist technique of image combination. -
Ch.23
Yusaku Kamekura, booklet cover, 1954. Torn paper Japanese characters and Bodoni letterforms spell the same word, typifying Kamekura's synthesis of Asian and Western forms. -
Ch.18
Anton Stankowski, calendar cover for Standard Elektrik Lorenz AG, 1957. A radial configuration symbolizes transmission and radiation using the client's radio and telephone products. -
Ch.19
Bob Gage (art director), Bill Bernbach and Judy Protas (writers), Ohrbach's advertisement, 1958. A “catty lady” learns how a friend dresses so well on an ordinary income: she buys high fashions for low price. -
Ch.19
Robert Brownjohn, album cover for Machito and His Orchestra, 1959. A pattern of abstract shapes is formed by repeating the bottom portions of letters fragmented by a stencil-lettering effect. -
Ch.19
Don Egensteiner (art director), advertisement for Young and Rubicam Advertising, 1960. The heavy, one-word headline crashes into the body copy to accomplish a major objective: grabbing attention. -
Ch.18
Bruno Pläffli of Atelier Frutiger, composition with the letter u, c. 1960. All twenty-one variations of Univers can be used together to achieve dynamic contrasts of weight, tone, width, and direction. -
Ch.19
Otto Storch (art director) and Paul Dome (photographer), pages from McCall's, 1961. Introductory pages for a frozen-foods feature unify typography and photography into a cohesive structure. -
Ch.18
Hermann Zapf, page from Manuale Typographicum, 1968. Jan Parandowski's thoughts concerning the power of the printed word to “govern time and space” inspired this graphic field of tension radiating from a central cluster. -
Ch.18
Dietmar Winkler, poster for a computer programming course at MIT, 1969. The term COBAL emerges from a kinetic construction of modular letters. -
Ch.22
Wolfgang Weingart, exhibition poster, 1984. Modulated patterns of overlapping shapes and colors structure the space. Switzerland is implied by the shape of the Matterhorn. -
Ch.24
David Carson (art director) and Pat Blashill (photographer), “Hanging at Carmine Street,” Beach Culture, 1991. Responding to the title of an editorial feature on a public swimming pool, Carson was inspired to “hang some type.” -
Ch.24
Pentagram (Paula Scher), poster for the Public Theater's productions of Hamlet and Hair, 2008. -
Ch.3
The Diamond Sutra, 868 CE. Wang Chieh sought spiritual improvement by commissioning the duplication of the Diamond Sutra by printing; the wide spread of knowledge was almost incidental. -
Ch.3
Chinese woodblock print, c. 950 CE. A prayer text is placed below an illustration of Manjusri, the Buddhist personification of supreme wisdom, riding a lion. -
Ch.4
Uncials from the Gospel of Saint Matthew, eighth century CE. Rounded strokes were made with the pen held in a straight horizontal position. -
Ch.4
The Book of Durrow, the man, symbol of Matthew, 680 CE. As flat as a cubist painting and constructed from simple geometric forms, this figure, facing the opening of the Gospel of Saint Matthew, wears a checkered pattern of red, yellow, and green squares and tile-like patterned textures. -
Ch.4
The Book of Durrow, opening page, the Gospel of Saint Mark, 680 CE. Linked into a ligature, an I and an N become an aesthetic form of interlaced threads and coiling spiral motifs. -
Ch.4
Coronation Gospels, opening pages of Saint Mark's Gospel, c. 800 CE. The author sits in a natural landscape on a page of deep crimson-stained parchment; the facing page is stained a deep purple with gold lettering. -
Ch.4
Capitularies of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, c. 873 CE, created in Rheims at a scriptorium associated with Charles the Bald (emperor 840–77). The capitularies is a compilation of law codes assembled by Ansegisus, abbot of Saint Wandrille, in 827 CE. The text is in Caroline minuscule with headings in rustic and a version of square capitals.
