-
500
The earliest writing
1–10. Ur III period, dated to Amar-Sin (2039 BCE) in Sumerian. Balanced silver account of Ur-Dumuzi, the merchant. -
500
The earliest writing
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. -
500
The earliest writing
Old Babylonian (c. 1850 BCE) in Akkadian. The world's oldest cookbook, a collection of recipes for dishes for the royal palace or the temple. -
500
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi, which was developed between 1792 and 1750 BCE. Above the densely textured law code, King Hammurabi is shown on a mountaintop with the seated sun god Shamash, who orders the king to write down the laws for the people of Babylon. A graphic image of divine authority as the source for the code becomes powerful visual persuasion. -
500
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Detail of the Code of Hammurabi, c. 1800 BCE. Whether pressed into clay or carved into stone as shown here, Mesopotamian scribes achieved a masterful control and delicacy in their writing and arrangement of the strokes in the partitioned space. -
500
Egyptian Hieroglyphics
The Rosetta Stone, c. 197–196 BCE. From top to bottom, the concurrent hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek inscriptions provided the key to the secrets of ancient Egypt. -
500
Egyptian
These Egyptian hieroglyphs illustrate the rebus principle. Words and syllables are represented by pictures of objects and by symbols whose names are similar to the word or syllable to be communicated. These hieroglyphs mean bee, leaf, sea, and sun. As rebuses (using the English language) they could also mean belief and season. -
500
Egyptian
1–24. Alphabet characters placed beside each hieroglyph in the cartouches of Ptolemy and Cleopatra demonstrate the approximate phonetic sounds deciphered by Champollion. -
500
The earliest writing
Early Sumerian artisans mixed writing with relief images. The Blau monument (Fig. 1–14) may be the oldest extant artifact combining words and pictures on the same surface. The knowledge explosion made possible by writing was remarkable. Mesopotamians organized libraries that contained thousands of tablets about religion, mathematics, history, law, medicine, and astronomy. -
Jun 19, 700
The Greek alphabet
Votive stele with four figures, fifth century BCE. The design excellence of Greek inscriptions is clearly shown in this fragment. By using a three-sided square with a central dot for the E and a V-shaped horizontal in the A, the designer engaged in a personal inventiveness with form. -
Jun 19, 750
The Latin alphabet
Carved inscription from the base of Trajan's Column, c. 114 CE Located in Trajan's Forum in Rome, this masterful example of capitalis monumentalis (monumental capitals) gives silent testimony to the ancient Roman dictum “the written word remains.” The controlled brush drawing of the forms on the stone combines with the precision of the stonemason's craft to create letterforms of majestic proportion and harmonious form. -
Jun 19, 1047
Romanesque and Gothic manuscripts
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Beatus of Fernando and Sancha, 1047 CE. Unlike other interpreters of the Apocalypse, Beatus saw the first horseman as God's envoy, whose arrows pierce the hearts of nonbelievers. -
Jun 19, 1050
Gothic manuscripts
The Pauline Epistles, from the mid-twelfth century, is a supreme example of the French gothic style. The serpentine initial letter on the left-hand page recalls the complexity of Celtic manuscript design. -
Jun 19, 1265
Gothic manuscripts
The multitude worshipping God, from the Douce Apocalypse, 1265 CE. Saint John, the roving reporter of the final doom, is shown at the left of the scene, peering curiously into the rectangular image. -
Jun 19, 1276
Printing Comes to Europe
French watermark designs, fifteenth century. These mermaid designs were produced by bent wire attached to the mold used in making paper. -
Period: Jun 19, 1276 to
A Graphic Renaissance: The origins of European typography and design for printing
Design innovations:
the title page
roman & italic type
printed page numbers
woodblock and cast metal ornaments
innovative approaches to the layout of illustrations with type -
Jun 19, 1300
Judaic manuscripts
After the Babylonian Exile in 587 bce, and again after the Romans crushed Jewish revolts in 70 ce and 135 ce, the Jewish population in Israel was dispersed. Following the second revolt against the Romans, Israel ceased to exist as a political entity. The Jewish people, religion, and culture lived on in the Diaspora (Greek for “dispersion” or “scattering”) throughout the known world. Surviving Judaic illuminated manuscripts produced across Europe during the medieval epoch are treasured masterwork -
Jun 19, 1300
Islamic manuscripts
Excellent example of the Islamic manuscript illumination that flourished from the thirteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Most likely produced in Iran or India during the eighteenth century, the manuscript is written on a highly polished paper in an elegant script. Intricate patterns with interlocking forms and vibrant colors share design motifs with Islamic architectural decorations and carpets. -
Jun 19, 1330
Moveable type
3–20. Woodblock image of a revolving typecase, c. 1313 CE. This quaintly stylized illustration shows the revolving case designed to make typesetting more efficient. -
Jun 19, 1334
Late medieval illuminated manuscripts
Page spread from the Savoy Book of Hours, Paris c. 1334–1340. Illuminated and written in French and Latin and on parchment. -
Jun 19, 1400
Early block printing
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. -
Jun 19, 1423
Early block printing
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. -
Jun 19, 1438
Gutenburg
Early in 1438 Gutenberg formed a contractual partnership with Strasbourg citizens Andreas Dritzehen (who had received gem-cutting training from Gutenberg) and Andreas Hellmann (who owned a paper mill). He agreed to teach them a secret process for making mirrors to sell at an Aachen pilgrimage fair the following year. Mirrors were rare and difficult to manufacture. Molten lead was poured over glass, forming a reflective surface when it cooled; the difficulty was preventing the glass from cracking -
Jun 19, 1440
Gutenburg cont.
The key to Gutenberg's invention was the type mold (Fig. 5–10), used for casting the individual letters. Each character had to be plane parallel in every direction and the exact same 7273height. Gutenberg's two-part type mold, which adjusted to accept matrixes for narrow characters (1) as well as wide ones (M), permitted large volumes of type to be cast with critical tolerances. Type required a metal that was soft enough to cast but hard enough to hold up for thousands of impressions, and that d -
Jun 19, 1440
Gutenburg
These early-nineteenth-century engravings illustrate Gutenberg's system for casting type. A steel punch is used to stamp an impression of the letterform into a softer brass matrix. After the matrix is slipped into the bottom of the two-part type mold, the mold is filled with the molten lead alloy to cast a piece of type. After the lead alloy cools, the type mold is opened and the type is removed. -
Jun 19, 1444
Movable typography in Europe
With the availability of paper, relief printing from woodblocks, and growing demand for books, the mechanization of book production by such means as movable type was sought by printers in Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Italy. In Avignon, France, goldsmith Procopius Waldfoghel was involved in the production of “alphabets of steel” around 1444, but with no known results. -
Jun 19, 1446
The Korean alphabet
Korean woodblock book translation, c. eighteenth century, of The Interpretation of Mencius's Theory by Liu Chunji (1607–1675). Reading from right to left and top to bottom, single Chinese symbols are followed by Korean alphabetic translations. -
Jun 19, 1447
The discovery of printing
3–15. 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. -
Jun 19, 1450
First Printed book
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. -
Jun 19, 1451
The German Illustrated Book
Ex libris design for Johannes Knabensberg, c. 1450s. One of the earliest extant bookplates, it bears an inscription, “Hans Igler that the hedgehog may kiss you.” Igler, Knabensberg's nickname, is similar to the German word for hedgehog, making this an early graphic pun. -
Jun 19, 1454
Early printing
Johann Gutenberg, thirty-one-line letters of indulgence, c. 1454. The written additions in this copy indicate that on the last day of December 1454, one Judocus Ott von Apspach was pardoned of his sins. -
Jun 19, 1459
Copperplate engraving
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. -
Jun 19, 1464
Early block printing
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. -
Jun 19, 1465
Early printing in Europe
Page from a Biblia Pauperum, 1465. In this typical layout, an architectural structure brings order to a complex page spread. -
Jun 19, 1481
Italian Renaissance
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.” -
Jun 19, 1500
The seventeenth century
he seventeenth century was a relatively quiet time for graphic design innovation. An abundant stock of ornaments, punches, matrixes, and woodblocks from the 1500s was widely available, so there was little incentive for printers to commission new graphic materials. An awakening of literary genius occurred during the seventeenth century, however. Immortal works by authors such as the British playwright and poet William Shakespeare. -
Jun 19, 1559
Seventeenth Century
Jean de Tournes (printer) and Bernard Salomon (illustrator), title page from Ovid's La vita et metamorfoseo (Metamorphoses), 1559. Three tonal qualities—Salomon's border designs, his denser illustrations, and Granjon's italics echoing the borders' flowing curves—are used by de Tournes with just the right amount of white space. -
The origins of information graphics
The foundation for information graphics is analytic geometry, a branch of geometry developed and first used in 1637 by the French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist René Descartes (1596–1650). Descartes used algebra to solve geometry problems, formulate equations to represent lines and curves, and represent a point in space by a pair of numbers. On a two-dimensional plane, -
Caslon and Baskerville
Caslon's type designs were not particularly fashionable or innovative. They owed their tremendous popularity and appeal to an outstanding legibility and sturdy texture that made them “comfortable” and “friendly to the eye.” Beginning with the Dutch types of his day, Caslon increased the contrast between thick and thin strokes by making the former slightly heavier. -
Photography
Making pictorial images, and preparing printing plates to reproduce them, remained handwork processes until the arrival of photography. The concept behind the device used for making images by photochemical processes, the camera obscura (Latin for “dark chamber”), was known in the ancient world as early as the time of Aristotle in the fourth century bce. A camera obscura is a darkened room or box with a small opening or lens in one side. -
The invention of paper
Li Fangying (1696–1755), from Album of Eight Leaves, ink on paper, Qing dynasty, 1744. The design of the total page, with the bamboo bending out into the open space in contrast to the erect column of writing, ranks among the most outstanding examples of Chinese art. -
Rococo era
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. -
Graphic design of the rococo era
The fanciful French art and architecture that flourished from about 1720 until around 1770 is called rococo. Florid and intricate, rococo ornament is composed of S- and C-curves 122123with scrollwork, tracery, and plant forms derived from nature, classical and oriental art, and medieval sources. Light pastel colors were often used with ivory white and gold in asymmetrically balanced designs. -
Islamic manuscripts
Title page of the Mainz Haggadah, copied by Moses ben Nathan Oppenheim in 1726. On the left Moses holds the Ten Commandments, and Aaron, the brother of Moses, stands on the right. -
Caslon
Benjamin Franklin (printer). M. T. Cicero's Cato Major or his Discourse of Old-Age: With Explanatory Notes, 1744. Cato Major is one of the first classics of Latin literature to have been translated and printed in the American colonies. Franklin was an avid admirer of Caslon's fonts and used them extensively. -
During the waning years of the eighteenth century, an unexpected counterpoint to the severe typography of Bodoni and Didot appeared in the illuminated printing of the visionary English poet and artist William Blake (1757–1827).
-
Baskerville
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. -
Period: to
The Bridge to the Twentieth Century: The Industrial Revolution: The impact of industrial technology upon visual communications
Industrial Revolution
Arts and Crafts
Art Nouveau
20th century design -
The modern style
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. -
The modern style
The son of an indigent printer, Giambattista Bodoni was born in Saluzzo in northern Italy. As a young man, he traveled to Rome and apprenticed at the Propaganda Fide, the Catholic press that printed missionary materials in native languages for use throughout the world. Bodoni learned punch cutting, but his interest in living in Rome declined after Costantino Ruggeri. -
Bodoni
Around 1790 Bodoni redesigned the roman letterforms to give them a more mathematical, geometric, and mechanical appearance. He reinvented the serifs by making them hairlines that formed sharp right angles with the upright strokes, eliminating the tapered flow of the serif into the upright stroke in Old Style roman. The thin strokes of his letterforms were trimmed to the same weight as the hairline serifs, creating a brilliant sharpness and a dazzling contrast not seen before. -
William Blake
William Blake, title page from America, a Prophecy, 1793. -
The development of lithography
Lithography was invented by Bavarian author Aloys Senefelder (1771–1834) between 1796 and 1798. Senefelder was seeking a cheap way to print his own dramatic works by experimenting with etched stones and metal reliefs. He eventually arrived at the idea that a stone could be etched away around grease-pencil writing and made into a relief printing plate. Senefelder named his process lithography (from the Greek lithos, “stone,” 162163and graphein, “to write”). -
Lithography
Lithography is based on the simple chemical principle that oil and water do not mix. An image is drawn on a flat stone surface with oil-based crayon, pen, or pencil. Water is spread over the stone to moisten all areas except the oil-based image, which repels the water. Then an oil-based ink is rolled over the stone, adhering to the image but not to the wet areas of the stone. A sheet of paper is placed over the image and a printing press is used to transfer the inked image onto the paper. -
Didot
Pierre Didot, pages from Vergil's Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis, 1798. This double-page spread shows the splendid perfection, lavish margins, and cool understatement of neoclassical graphic design. -
A revolution in printing
Several improvements to make the handpress stronger and more efficient culminated in Charles Stanhope producing a printing press (Fig. 9–21) in 1800 that was constructed completely of cast-iron. The metal screw mechanism required approximately one-tenth the manual force needed to print on a wooden press, and Stanhope's press could print a sheet double the size. -
Printing revolution
This engraved illustration depicts the printing press of all-iron parts invented in England by Charles Stanhope. -
Printing revolution
The first steam-powered cylinder press, 1814. Koenig's invention caused the speed of printing to skyrocket, while its price dropped considerably. -
Bodoni
Giambattista Bodoni, title page from Manuale tipografico, 1818. The crisp clarity of Bodoni's letterforms are echoed by the scotch rules. Composed of double and triple thick-and-thin elements, these rules and borders echo the weight contrasts of Bodoni's modern types. -
Giambattista Bodoni, page from Manuale tipografico, 1818.
-
Victorian type
s the Victorian era progressed, the taste for ornate elaboration became a major influence on typeface and lettering design. Early nineteenth-century elaborated types were based on letterforms with traditional structure. Shadows, outlines, and embellishments were applied while retaining the classical letter structure. In the second half of the century, advances in industrial technology permitted metal-type foundries to push elaboration. -
Innovations in Type
Robert Thorne, fat-face types, 1821. Although the record dates these designs to William Thorowgood's 1821 publication of New Specimen of Printing Types, Late R. Thorne's, it is generally thought that Thorne designed the first fat faces in 1803. -
The modern style
William Playfair, Chart no. 1 from A Letter on Our Agricultural Distresses, 1822. This hand-colored engraving uses a fever and bar chart to depict “in one view the price of the quarter of wheat.” -
Victorian type
William Pickering, title page for Publius Terentius Afer, 1822. Part of the Diamond Classics, a series of miniature books produced by Pickering from 1820 to 1826. These were set in the minuscule Diamond type especially produced for this series by Charles Corrall. -
First photo from nature
Joseph Niépce, the first photograph from nature, 1826. Looking out over the rear courtyard of the Niépce home, the light and shadow patterns formed by (from left to right) a wing of the house, a pear tree, a barn roof in front of a low bake house with a chimney, and another wing of the house are seen. -
Inventors of photogrpahy
In 1826 Niépce expanded his discovery by putting one of his pewter plates in the back of his camera obscura and pointing it out the window. This allowed him to make a picture directly from nature; the earliest extant photograph is a pewter sheet that Niépce exposed all day (Fig. 9–27). When he removed it from the camera obscura and washed it with lavender oil, a hazy image of the sunlit buildings outside his workroom window was captured. -
Wood Type Poster
n American printer named Darius Wells (1800–75) began to experiment with hand-carved wooden types and in 1827 invented a lateral router that enabled the economical mass manufacture of wood types for display printing. Durable, light, and less than half as expensive as large metal types, wood type rapidly overcame printers' initial objections and had a significant impact on poster and broadsheet design. -
First printed image
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. -
Chromolithography
n 1846 the American inventor and mechanical genius Richard M. Hoe (1812–86) perfected the rotary lithographic press, which was nicknamed “the lightning press” because it could print six times as fast as the lithographic flatbed presses then in use. This innovation proved an important boost in lithography's competition with letterpress (Fig. 9–51). Economical color printing, ranging from art reproductions for middle-class parlors to advertising graphics of every description, poured from the press -
Victorian type
William Pickering, pages from The Elements of Euclid, 1847. Although the ornate initial letters connected this book to the past, its revolutionary layout was far ahead of its time. -
Victorian Era
Owen Jones, color plate from The Grammar of Ornament, 1856. This plate shows patterns found in the arts and crafts of India. -
Art Nouveau
Increased trade and communication between Asian and European countries during the late nineteenth century caused a cultural collision; both East and West experienced change as a result of reciprocal influences. Asian art provided European and North American artists and designers with approaches to space, color, drawing conventions, and subject matter that were radically unlike Western traditions. This revitalized graphic design during the last decade of the nineteenth century. -
Art Nouveau Characteristics
Art nouveau's identifying visual quality is an organic, plantlike line. Freed from roots and gravity, it can either undulate with whiplash energy or flow with elegant grace as it defines, modulates, and decorates a given space. Vine tendrils, flowers (such as the rose and lily), birds (particularly peacocks), and the human female form were frequent motifs from which this fluid line was adapted. -
Art Nouveau
Jules Chéret, poster for La biche au bois (The Doe in the Wood), 1866. Chéret's early green and black poster used the multiple image format so popular in the 1860s. The lettering is a harbinger of the swirling forms marking his mature style. -
Futurism
Lewis Carroll, typographic image, 1866. Unexpected and totally different from the rest of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, this graphic experiment in figurative typography has received both design and literary acclaim. -
Chromolithography
John H. Bufford's Sons, “Swedish Song Quartett” poster, 1867. Arched words move gracefully above seven carefully composed musicians. Large capital letters point to the three soloists, establishing a visual relationship between word and image. -
Photography and printing
n 1871 John Calvin Moss of New York pioneered a commercially feasible photoengraving method for translating line artwork into metal letterpress plates. A negative of the original illustration was made on a copy camera suspended from the ceiling by a rope to prevent vibration (Fig. 9–34). In a highly secret process, a negative of the original art was contact-printed to a metal plate coated with a light-sensitive gelatin emulsion and then etched with acid. -
Political cartoon
Thomas Nast, political cartoon from Harper's Weekly, 1871. In this cartoon depicting citizens both creating and hanging posters against Tammany Hall, the caption begins by saying, “Here's the smell of corruption still!” -
Wood type
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! -
Chéret and Grasset
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. -
Editorial design
Inventive book design was not a concern for most publishing firms in America and Europe, including Harper and 170171Brothers, during most of the nineteenth century. With the rapid expansion of the reading public, and the economies resulting from new technologies, publishers focused on large press runs and modest prices. Modern-style fonts, often second-rate derivatives of Bodoni and Didot designs, were composed in workaday page layouts. -
Rise of editorial design
Richard G. Tietze, poster for Harper's Magazine, 1883. An impressionistic quality is achieved in an illustration divided into three zones, with the middle holly area providing a background for the message while separating the images. -
Arts and Crafts
William Morris, Rose fabric design, 1883. -
Printing revolution
The Model 5 Linotype became the workhorse of typesetting, with keyboards and matrixes available in over a thousand languages. -
Arts and Crafts
Selwyn Image, woodcut from The Hobby Horse, 1886. The potential of shape and pattern as visual means to express thought and feeling is realized in this graphic elegy for illustrator/engraver Arthur Burgess. A black bird flies toward the sun over mournful downturned tulips that hover above flaming leaves. -
Chromolithography
L. Prang and Company and others, c. 1880–early 1900s. This collection shows a range of graphic ephemera printed by chromolithography. -
Art nouveau comes to America
British and French graphic art soon joined forces to invade America. In 1889, and again in 1891 and 1892, Harper's magazines commissioned covers from Eugène Grasset (Fig. 11–42). These first presentations of a new approach to graphic design were literally imported, for Grasset's designs were printed in Paris and shipped by boat to New York to be bound onto the magazines. The visual poster was adopted by the American publishing industry, and colorful placards began to appear at the newsstands -
Art nouveau in America
A. L. Rich, trademark for General Electric, c. 1890. This design satisfies the requirements of a successful trademark: it is unique, legible, and unequivocal, which explains why it has survived decades of fluctuating design approaches. (A registered trademark of General Electric Company, used by permission.) -
The further development of French art nouveau
Even Jules Chéret had to concede that Toulouse-Lautrec's 1891 poster “La Goulue au Moulin Rouge” broke new ground in poster design (Fig. 11–25). A dynamic pattern of flat planes—black spectator's silhouettes, yellow ovals for lamps, and the stark white undergarments of the notorious cancan dancer, who performed with transparent or slit underwear—move horizontally across the center of the poster. -
English art nouveau
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. -
Bazaar American Art nouveau
Louis Rhead, cover for Harper's Bazar, 1894. Dazzling linear patterns animate the background. Note the intensity of Rhead's colorful advertisement for Royal Baking Powder on the back cover, in contrast to the other three more typical ads. -
Innovation in Belgium and the Netherlands
The cover design for a Les Vingt (The Twenty) exhibition catalogue by Georges Lemmen (1865–1916) in 1891 demonstrates that Belgian artists were at the vanguard in the movement toward a new art -
Bradley
Bradley was inventive in his approach to typographic design and flouted all the prevailing rules and conventions. Type became a design element to be squeezed into a narrow column or letterspaced so that lines containing various numbers of letters became the same length and formed a rectangle. Inspired by the Kelmscott Press, Bradley established the Wayside Press after moving from Chicago to Springfield, Massachusetts, in late 1894. -
Kelmscott press
William Morris, title page spread from The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelly, 1895. The elaborate border decoration is similar to that for The Story of the Glittering Plain, yet the overall page design is more structured. -
French Art nouveau
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, poster for Troupe de Mademoiselle Eglantine, 1896. The dancers' stockings guide the viewer from left to right across the poster surface, culminating with the feather collar of the dancer in the foreground. -
German Art nouveau
Otto Eckmann, Jugend cover, 1896. Jugendstil graphics often blended curvilinear stylization with traditional realism. -
French Art nouveau
Steinlen arrived in Paris at age twenty-two with his young wife, a great love of drawing, and a mania for cats. His first Paris commissions were cat drawings for Le Chat Noir (Fig. 11–30). Steinlen was a prolific illustrator during the 1880s and 1890s, and his radical political views, socialist affiliations, and anticlerical stance led him toward a social realism depicting poverty, exploitation, and the working class. His black-and-white lithographs often had color printed by a stencil process. -
The German Jugendstil movement
When art nouveau arrived in Germany it was called Jugendstil (youth style) after a new magazine, Jugend (Youth), which began publication in Munich in 1896. From Munich, Jugendstil spread to Berlin, Darmstadt, and all over Germany. German art nouveau had strong French and British influences, but it also retained strong links to traditional academic art. -
Plakatstil
The reductive, flat-color design school that emerged in Germany early in the twentieth century is called Plakatstil (Poster Style). In 1898, fifteen-year-old Lucian Bernhard (1883–1972) attended the Munich Glaspalast Exhibition of Interior Decoration and was overwhelmed by what he saw. Returning home “just drunk with color” from this avant-garde design show -
Period: to
The Modernist Era: Graphic design in the first half of the twentieth century
he first two decades of the twentieth century were a time of ferment and change that radically altered all aspects of the human condition. The social, political, cultural, and economic character of life was caught in fluid upheaval. In Europe, monarchy was replaced by democracy, socialism, and communism. Technology and scientific advances transformed commerce and industry. Transportation was radically altered by the coming of the motorcar (1885) and the airplane (1903). The motion picture (1896) -
Sach plakat characteristics
The characteristics of the object poster, called 'hyperrealism' or 'SachPlakat' in German, were one product oversized, just the name of the company, high quality paper and bright colors. -
Plakatstill
Lucian Bernhard, poster for Priester matches, c. 1905. Color became the means of projecting a powerful message with minimal information. -
Wood type
Harrild and Sons, London, wood-type fonts, 1906. In spite of the decrease in letterpress posters, wood type continued to be manufactured, though on a much smaller scale, during the first years of the twentieth century. -
Futurism
Futurism (Italian: Futurismo) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane and the industrial city. It was largely an Italian phenomenon, though there were parallel movements in Russia, England and elsewhere. -
Cubism
Pablo Picasso, Man with Violin, 1911–12. In the analytical cubism phase, Picasso and Braque studied the planes of a subject from different vantage points, fractured them, and pulled them forward toward the canvas surface. The planes shimmer vibrantly in ambiguous positive and negative relationships one to another. -
futurism
Filippo Marinetti, cover for Zang Tumb Tumb, 1912. The title is a sound poem in itself. -
Surrealism
Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation No. 29, 1912. Kandinsky defined an improvisation as a spontaneous expression of inner character having a spiritual nature. -
Plakatsil Chracteristics
The traits of this style of art are usually bold eye-catching lettering with flat colors.Shapes and objects are simplified while there is a central image which is the focus of the poster. -
Cubism Characteristics
Geometricity, a simplication of figures and objects into geometrical components and planes that may or may not add up to the whole figure or object known in the natural world.
Approximation of the Fourth Dimension.
Conceptual, instead of perceptual, reality.
Distortion and deformation of known figures and forms in the natural world.
Passage, the overlapping and interpenetration of planes.
Simultaneity or multiple views -
Dada Chracteristics
Dada had only one rule: Never follow any known rules
Dada was intended to provoke an emotional reaction from the viewer (typically shock or outrage).
Dada art is nonsensical to the point of whimsy. Almost all of the people who created it were ferociously serious, though
Abstraction and Expressionism were the main influences on Dada, followed by Cubism and, to a lesser extent, Futurism.
Dada self-destructed when it was in danger of becoming "acceptable". -
Poster goes to war
Hans Rudi Erdt, poster heralding German submarines, c. 1916. A powerful structural joining of type and image proclaimed, “U-Boats Out!” -
Futurism
Guillaume Apollinaire, poem from Calligrammes, 1918. The typography becomes a bird, a water fountain, and an eye in this expressive design. -
Postcubist pictorial modernism
The era between the two world wars began with a decade of unprecedented prosperity in much of Europe and North America. Faith in the machine and technology was at an all-time high. This ethic gained expression through art and design. Fernand Léger's celebration of mechanical, machine-made, and industrial forms became an important design resource, and cubist ideas about spatial organization and synthetic imagery inspired an important new direction in pictorial images. -
Cubism
Fernand Léger, page from La fin du monde, 1919. A whirlwind tour of the re-creation of the earth after the fall of man is illustrated by a pinwheel of lettering spelling “accelerated slow motion cinema.” -
Dada
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. -
Russian suprematism and constructivism
Beginning with Marinetti's Russian lectures, the decade saw Russian artists absorb cubism and futurism with amazing speed and then move on to new innovations. The Russian avant-garde saw common traits in cubism and futurism and coined the term cubo-futurism. Experimentation in typography and design characterized their futurist publications, which presented work by the visual and literary art communities. -
Jan Tschichold
Jan Tschichold, poster for a graphic art exhibition, 1919. Symmetry and historical letterforms characterize Tschichold's youthful work. -
De Stijl
Théo van Doesburg, cover for Klassiek, Barok, Moderne (Classic, Baroque, Modern), 1920. For this book cover, Van Doesburg used his own letterforms. -
The Bauhaus and the New Typography characteristics
Geometric, functional and modern
Order, asymmetry
Rectangular grid structure
Circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, bars, and rules to unify or separate elements versus being used for decoration
Horizontals and verticals were dominant
Typography without capitals - San Serif
Introduction of flush left - rag right typography
Copy rotated 90 degrees
Only structurally essential components used
Elementary forms and the use of black plus one bright hue
Color tints emphasize key words -
Futurism
Fortunato Depero, New Futurist Theater Company poster, 1924. Flat planes of vibrant color, diagonal composition, and angular repetitive forms produce kinetic energy. -
Surrealism Characteristic
The exploration of the dream and unconsciousness as a valid form of reality, inspired by Sigmund Freud's writings.
A willingness to depict images of perverse sexuality, scatology, decay and violence.
The desire to push against the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviors and traditions in order to discover pure thought and the artist's true nature.
Emphasis on the mysterious, marvelous, mythological and irrational in an effort to make art ambiguous and strange. -
Expressionism Characteristics
Emotions And Feelings:
Subjectivity
Vivid Coloration
Dynamic And Distorted Forms
Characteristics of Movements Within Expressionism -
Expressionism
Paul Klee, Fish Magic, 1925. Images are reinvented into potent signs; color, form, and texture are delicately balanced into a cohesive composition; and the whole transmits a quiet poetry from a world invented by the artist's imagination. -
De Stijl characteristics
Proponents of De Stijl advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white.
Piet Mondrian, oil on canvas, Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue, 1927. -
The Bauhaus at Dessau
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. -
international typographic style
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. -
international typographic style
Max Bill, exhibition poster, 1945. Diamond-shaped photographs form a wedge; some photographs are placed on the white ground to equalize the figure and ground. -
Photography and modern movement
It was inevitable that the new visual language of the modern movements, with its concern for point, line, plane, shape, and texture, and for the relationships between these visualelements, would begin to influence photography, just as it had affected typography in the futurist and Dadaist approaches to graphic design. -
Dada
John Heartfield, AIZ 9, number 6, page 103, illustration attacking the press, 1930. A surreal head wrapped in newspaper appears over a headline: “Whoever reads the bourgeois press turns blind and deaf. Away with the stultifying bandages!” -
The spread of constructivism
Wladyslaw Strzeminski, cover for Z ponad, a collection of poems by Julian Przybos, 1930. The cover design is indicative of Strezeminski's background as a constructivist painter. -
Bauhaus Futura
Paul Renner, Futura typefaces, 1927–30. The extensive range of sizes and weights provided vigorous contrasts for printers and designers who adopted the new typography. -
Isotype movement
The important movement toward developing a “world language without words” began in the 1920s, continued into the 1940s, and still has important influences today. The Isotype concept involves the use of elementary pictographs to convey information. -
Period: to
The Age of Information: Graphic design in the global village
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Surrealism
Max Ernst, collage from Une semaine de bonté (A Week of Kindness), 1934. Photomechanical printing techniques obliterate cut edges, unifying the image. -
New photogrpahy
The new language of form began in Russia and Holland, crystallized at the Bauhaus, and found one of its most articulate spokesmen in Jan Tschichold. The rational and scientific sensibilities of the twentieth century gained graphic expression. The new typography enabled designers of vision to develop functional and expressive visual communications, and it continued to be an important influence well into the late twentieth century. -
Spanish civil war posters
The Spanish Civil War arose out of tensions between the liberal Republicans and the conservative Nationalists. Shifts between monarchy, military, and democratic governments fractured the nation into many ideological, social, cultural, and geographic subgroups. -
Maverick from Munich
A leading Plakatstil designer, Ludwig Hohlwein (1874–1949) of Munich, began his career as a graphic illustrator with work commissioned by Jugend magazine as early as 1904. During the first half of the century, Hohlwein's graphic art evolved with changing social conditions. The Beggarstaffs were his initial inspiration, and in the years before World War I Hohlwein took great delight in reducing his images to flat shapes. -
Patron of design
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. -
The war years
While the trauma of war disrupted the ability of many governments to produce graphic propaganda, a diverse group of painters, illustrators, and designers received commissions from the U.S. Office of War Information. America's wartime graphics ranged from brilliantly conceived posters to informational training materials and amateurish cartoons. -
After the war
The United States demobilized millions of troops and converted industry from wartime needs to consumer markets after World War II. Seeking another institutional advertising campaign using fine art, CCA decided to commission paintings by artists from each of the then forty-eight states logotype. -
Sach Plakat
Herbert Leupin, poster for Die Weltwoche, 1949. A globe and a rolled up newspaper together form an exclamation point. -
international typographic style
Max Huber, yearbook cover, 1951. An informal balance of halftones printed in red, black, and blue combines with yellow rectangles to turn the space into an energy-charged field. -
Informational and scientific graphics
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. -
Conceptual image
Sensing that traditional narrative illustration did not address the needs of the times, post–World War I graphic designers reinvented the communicative image to express the machine age and advanced visual ideas. In a similar quest for new imagery, the decades after World War II saw the development of the conceptual image in graphic design. Images conveyed not merely narrative information but ideas and concepts. -
International typographic style characteristics
During the 1950s a design movement emerged from Switzerland and Germany that has been called Swiss design or, more appropriately, the International Typographic Style. The objective clarity of this design movement won converts throughout the world. It remained a major force for over two decades, and its influence continues today. -
New Swiss sans-serif typefaces characteristics
The size and weight of the capitals are close to the size and weight of the lowercase characters; therefore, the texture and tone of a Univers text setting is more uniform than that of most earlier typefaces, especially in multilingual publications. -
Corporate identity visual systems
Paul Rand, IBM trademark, 1956. The original design is shown with outline versions and the eight- and thirteen-stripe versions currently used. -
New advertising
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. -
New international typographic style
Armin Hofmann, poster for the Basel theater production of Giselle, 1959. An organic, kinetic, and soft photographic image contrasts intensely with geometric, static, and hard-edged typographic shapes. -
New York School characteristics
Unconventional application of paint, usually without a recognizable subject (de Kooning's Woman series is an exception) that tends toward amorphous shapes in brilliant colors. Dripping, smearing, slathering, and flinging lots of paint on to the canvas (often an unprimed canvas). Sometimes gestural "writing" in a loosely calligraphic manner. In the case of Color Field artists: carefully filling the picture plane with zones of color that create tension between the shapes and hues. -
Corporate identity
Paul Rand, Westinghouse trademark, 1960. This mark is shown as it might be constructed in an animated film sequence. -
Helvetica
Helvetica's well-defined forms and excellent rhythm of positive and negative shapes made it the most specified typeface internationally during the 1960s and 1970s. However, because different designers in several countries developed Helvetica's various weights, italics, and widths, the original Helvetica family lacked the cohesiveness of Univers. -
An editorial design revolution
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. -
The polish poster
Roman Cieslewicz, circus poster, 1962. Collage elements superimpose the word cyrk and a clown on a high-contrast photograph of an elephant. -
International style in america
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American typographic expressionism
Herb Lubalin (designer) and Tom Carnase (letterer), proposed magazine logo, 1967. The ampersand enfolds and protects the “child” in a visual metaphor for motherly love. -
Poster mania
. These posters made statements about social viewpoints rather than spreading commercial messages. The first wave of poster culture emerged from the late 1960s hippie subculture centered in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco. Because the media and general public related these posters to antiestablishment values, rock music, and psychedelic drugs, they were called psychedelic posters -
Postermodern design characteristics
Moving away from the conformities of design. Anti-patriotic. The poster has texture along with quite bold, block colouring, both qualities being characteristics of postmodern design. This cover would later come to influence a style that would come to categorize early postmodern design different typeface in one compositions with little to no visible organization and the use of appropriation. -
Third world posters
Third-world posters address two constituencies: in their native lands, they tackle political and social issues, motivating people toward one side of a political or social struggle; a secondary audience exists in the industrial democracies, where distributors such as Liberation Graphics in Alexandria. -
Corporate identity
Chermayeff & Geismar Associates, trademarks for (left to right, top to bottom) the American Film Institute, 1964; Time Warner, 1990; the American Revolution Bicentennial, 1971; Screen Gems, 1966; Burlington Industries, 1965; the National Broadcasting Company, 1986; Rockefeller Center, 1985; and the National Aquarium in Baltimore, 1979. -
Transportation signage symbols
Major international events, large airports, and other transportation facilities handling international travelers have commissioned graphic designers to create pictographic signage programs to communicate important information and directions quickly and simply. The development of these sign-and-symbol systems involved considerable time and expense, and near duplication of effort often occurred. -
European visual poets
In Europe, beginning in the 1960s and continuing into the 1990s, there emerged a poetic approach to graphic design based on imagery and its manipulation through collage, montage, and both photographic and photomechanical techniques. The graphic poets stretched time and typography, merged and floated objects, and fractured and fragmented images in a sometimes disturbing but always engaging manner. -
American conceptual images
During the 1950s the golden age of American illustration was drawing to a close. For over fifty years narrative illustration had ruled American graphic design, but improvements in paper, printing, and photography caused the illustrator's edge over the photographer to recede rapidly. Traditionally, illustrators had exaggerated value contrasts, intensified color, and made edges and details sharper than life to create more convincing images than photography. -
Memphis and San Franscico Schools
Designers 470471were deeply enamored of texture, pattern, surface, color, and a playful geometry. Innovation occurred in many cities and countries around the globe, with important contributions from diverse groups, including architects and product designers in Milan, Italy, and graphic designers in San Francisco, California. -
New wave typography characteristics
In design, New Wave refers to an approach to typography that actively defies strict grid-based arrangement conventions. Characteristics include inconsistent letterspacing, varying typeweights within single words and type set at unusual angles. -
Postermodern
Michael Manwaring, brochure cover for Barr Exhibits, 1984. Postmodern design delights in pastel shades and repeated patterns. The viewer participates in the design by deciphering the half-hidden B. -
Swiss postmodern
Tendencies toward postmodern graphic design first emerged from individuals working within the dictates of the International Typographic Style. The main thrust of this movement was toward neutral and objective typography; the playful, unexpected, and disorganized were rarely allowed to encroach upon its cool clarity and scientific objectivity. -
Retro and vernacular design
The prefix retro suggests the term retrograde, implying “backward-looking” and “contrary to the usual.” Retro may be considered an aspect of postmodernism because of its interest in historical revivals, yet it paraphrases modern design from the decades between the wars rather than the Greco-Roman and Renaissance motifs employed by many architects. The term vernacular design refers to artistic and technical expression broadly characteristic of a locale or historical period -
Digital type foundry
Early digital type-design systems, such as the pre-PostScript Ikarus system used in the 1980s by typesetting machinery manufacturers, were very expensive. When font-design software for desktop computers—for example, Fontographer—became available, it enabled designers to design and market original typefaces as electronic files on computer disks, with significant reductions in the high cost of designing and distributing fonts. -
Recent British graphic design
With its constantly changing consumer market and ever-expanding multicultural population, London is often characterized as transitory and enigmatic. Herein lies a visual culture embracing new media and the development of computer echnology through a multitude of emerging design studios offering different approaches to visual problem solving. -
Pintori at Olivetti
The first phase in the development of postwar visual identification resulted from pioneering efforts by strong individual designers who put their personal imprint on a client's designed image.
Giovanni Pintori, poster for the Olivetti Elettrosumma 22, 1956. An informal structure of cubes and numerals suggests the mathematical building process that takes place when this calculating machine is used. -
Papyrus and writing
1–27. Drawing of the Sarcophagus of Aspalta. King of Nubia (Sudan), c. 593–568 BCE. The inscriptions carved into this granite sarcophagus demonstrate the flexibility of hieroglyphics. -
Papyrus and writing
The hieroglyph for scribe depicted the Old Kingdom palette, the drawstring sack for dried ink cakes, and a reed brush holder. The changes in this glyph demonstrate the evolutionary process (from left to right): hieroglyph, 2700 BCE; hieroglyphic manuscript hand, c. 1500 BCE; hieratic script, c. 1300 BCE; and demotic script, c. 400 BCE. -
Egyptian visual identification
Detail from the Papyrus of Hunefer, c. 1370 BCE. Hunefer and his wife are worshipping the gods of Amenta. The sun god Ra bears an ankh symbol on his knee, and Thoth holds the udjat, the magical protective “sound eye” of the god Horus. -
The North Semitic alphabet
2–2. The Phaistos Disk, undated. The 241 signs include a man in a plumed headdress, a hatchet, an eagle, a carpenter's square, an animal skin, and a vase. -
Celtic book design
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. -
Celtic book design
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. -
The Caroline graphic renewal
The Lindisfarne Gospels, carpet page facing the opening of Saint Matthew, c. 698 CE. A mathematical grid buried under swirling lacertine birds and quadrupeds brings structure to the textured areas. A red, contoured cross with white circular “buttons” brings timeless stability to its churning energy. -
Caroline graphic renewal
The Book of Kells, the Chi-Rho page, 794–806 CE. Amid intricate spirals and lacertines, the artist has drawn thirteen human heads, two cats, two mice calmly watching two other mice tug at a wafer, and an otter holding a salmon. -
Spanish pictorial expressionism
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. -
Spanish pictoral expressionism
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. -
Period: to Jun 19, 1400
lluminated Manuscripts
The vibrant luminosity of gold leaf, as it reflected light from the pages of handwritten books, gave the sensation of the page being literally illuminated; thus, this dazzling effect gave birth to the term illuminated manuscript. Today this name is used for all decorated and illustrated handwritten books produced from the late Roman Empire until printed books replaced manuscripts after typography was developed in Europe around 1450.
