TIMELINE
The earliest form of communication is depicted as paintings in a cave which are said to be from 15000-10000 BCE. The cave is located in Lascaux, France. In the cave there are over 900 paintings identified as animals. The paintings were not done in a specific pattern and placed at random with lack of scale to what the paintings were of. The paintings also show no vegetation. The walls of the cave filled with these paintings, we think, to show instruction, to be spiritual, or they were just myths. Soon came to be Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization and the Fertile Crescent. They started communicating by using a stylus and soft clay. This style is called cuneiform. Around 6000 BCE they started making tools out of bronze. With these advancements record keeping is started. The form of writing used is called pictograph, which later turned into petroglyphs. The Egyptians survived over 3000 years from about 3100 BCE- 394AD and used a form of writing called hieroglyphs. Napoleon found the Rosetta stone, c. 197-196 BCE, which taught us how to read the Egyptian hieroglyphs, demotic script, and Greek. The paper they used is made of the plant papyrus and the utensils are also made from the stems.
The Blau monument is a cuneiform that was developed in Mesopotamia.
Egyptian drawing of the Sarcophagus of Aspalta.
ALPHABETS
The alphabet was created through loss of pictographs and transformed into symbols that had no meaning and were just sounds. The Greeks used the phonetic alphabet, which is creating words into meaningless sound, meaningless signs and letters, and was structured and extremely organized through abstract thought. The Etruscans were between the Greeks and the Romans. They tried to make some educational toys and one of the prototypes was a rooster shaped jug with the Etruscan alphabet on it. The Etruscan alphabet came from Greece and was later taken on by the Romans. The Romans when writing did not space out the words, as well a s t h e u s e l o w e r c a s e l e t t e r s e i t h e r. T h e y w e r e a h i g h l y o r g a n i z e d culture and took great pride in their imperial accomplishments and conquests. Inscriptions were made to celebrate their military leaders and battles they had won. What was really amazing about the Romans was their attention to detail in shapes. Other than just the alphabet the Romans also took up using aqueducts for sanitation and irrigation. Romans started using serifs, which are little feet added onto the letters that help one move through what the reading was easily.
Greek Timotheus
Etruscan Bucchero vase
Roman carved inscription from the base of Trajan’s Column
ASIAN
CONTRIBUTION
The Asian contribution consisted of calligraphy, paper, printing, and more. The Chinese calligraphy was similar to that of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan writing. The earliest known writing for the Chinese is called chiaku-wen or bone and shell script and was used for around 600 years from 1800 BCE to 12000 BCE. The calligraphy was different for different parts of China until Emperor Shih Huang Ti unified it in 259 BCE. The paper was made from bamboo and so were the pens that were used. Soon after, the Chinese discovered printing. The first form of printing was known as a relief. The way that prints were made were from cutting away on a flat side of a block and putting it in ink and pressing it onto paper leaving behind the ink raised on the paper. The concept of movable type was created around 1045 CE by Pi Sheng and alchemist. This process made it easier for placing and quantity.
Woodblock printing and paper: Zhoa Meng-fu
I L LU M I N AT E D MANUSCRIPTS The Greeks and Romans made illustrated manuscripts and are known as the classical style. There have only been a few found that are still in good condition that is because of a fire that destroyed the great library. The Vatican Vergil text is lettered in crisp rustic capitals and has columns on each page. It shows rich colors and illusionistic space. Celtic design was very abstract and extremely complex, such that geometric linear patterns fill space by weaving and twisting. Initials that were on the opening pages became larger in newer books. These initials made things difficult in designing and monks fixed the issue by creating a graphic principle called diminuendo, which decrease the scale of the graphic information. The Spanish illuminated manuscripts portrayed a variety of Islamic design altered into Spanish Christian manuscripts. They had a fascination with designs being geometric and intense with pure colors. The Romanesque period lasted from 1000 to 1150 CE and evolved into the Gothic period. These manuscripts were bibles, gospels, and psalters. They showed the illusionistic revival of the Carolingian era with a new emphasis with linear drawing and distortion.
Celtic, the book of Durrow
Lots from Classical TheVatican Vergil
Spanish, Coronation Gospels
Romanesque Gothic, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Rise of Printing in Europe Renaissance Graphic Design During the time of the Renaissance of Graphic Desgin several things were happening. German typography took off in 1300 and lasted until 1500. It was the end of illuminated manuscripts. Europe gained fire arms and the Black Death, or the plague killed 60 percent of Europe’s population. There came a demand for books, or codex. Paper production began with a watermark from 1282. Johann Gutenberg, a German metal smith, created the printing press. This changed typography forever by printing with independent, movable, and reusable bits of metal. It became economical and made multiple productions possible and created a mass communication. In 1450 Gutenberg acquired loans from Johann Fust. Fust’s foreman was Peter Shoeffer and they soon formed Fust and Shoeffer, which became the most important printing firm. They had a dynasty of printers, publishers, and booksellers for the next 100 years. Gutenberg later died in 1468 with no money to his name.
Gutenberg, movable reusable type, mass communication.
Copperplate Engraving.
Broadsides (posters).
German Illustrated Book
Aldine Press
French Printing, spec. Tory and Garamond
T YPOGRAPHY I N T H E 18 T H CENTURY
From 1700 to 1800 there was a typographic explosion and an industrial revolution. In France 1692 King Louis XIV ruled wealthy and unaware of poverty that had stricken the masses. There was a strong interest in printing and the Romain Du Roi was created. The style could only be used by king’s office for royal printing, it was known as a capital offense to disobey. Fournier le Jeune was considered a pioneer of standardization in 1737 when he published his first table of proportions. A form of type was created called Pouce which was slightly longer than an inch. The initiation of the idea of type families that are visually compatible and can be mixed was formed. Caslon was a metal engraver that eventually got into printing through a suggestion of a friend, he had an immediate success. John Baskerville was involved in all aspects of the book making process at his press. He bridged a gap between old style and the modern type design they had at the time.
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
AND
T YPOGRAPHIC
EXPLOSION
The Industrial Revolution had a great process of social and economic change. Cities were growing more and more as people wanted to be employed. Political powered changed to capitalists. Soon the capitalists became the most powerful force in Western countries. There was an increase in public education and literacy after the French and American revolutions. There were new innovations of typography emerging, some of the typefaces that came to were fat-face, antique, and Egyptian type. Eventually there came a type called a Sans-serif that was created by Vincent Figgins in 1832. Along with the explosion of typography came a revolution in printing. The steam-powered cylinder press changed everything when it came to printing, especially the news. More advancements came to pass with the mechanization of typography and soon photography was invented. By 1840 photography began to be applied into printing and then it was being used as a historical record.
VICTORIAN ERA
THE VICTORIAN ERA WAS THE REIGN OF QUEEN VICTORIA FROM 1819 TO 1901. DURING THIS TIME THERE WERE STRONG MORALS AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, PROPER SOCIAL CONVENTIONS, AND OPTIMISM. CHROMOLITHOGRAPHY STARTED AND THERE WAS A SCHOOL FOR IT IN BOSTON. THE ROTARY LITHOGRAPHIC PRESS WAS PERFECTED BY RICHARD M. HOE IN 1846. THE PRESS WAS ALSO KNOWN AS “THE LIGHTNING PRESS” DUE TO IT BEING ABLE TO PRINT AT SIX TIMES THE SPEED OF THE LITHOGRAPHIC FLATBED PRESSES. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY THE BATTLE ON THE SIGNBOARDS STARTED. THEN THERE WAS A RISE IN ADVERTISING DESIGN AND THE HARPER AND BOTHERS FIRM WAS BORN. ALSO IN THE VICTORIAN ERA THERE CAME THE VICTORIAN TYPOGRAPHY. IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY THE USE OF METAL-TYPE MADE FANCIFUL DISTORTION FOR THE BASIC LETTERFORMS POSSIBLE. SEVERAL MORE NEW TYPEFACES WERE CREATED, COLUMBUS, CRAYON, KARNAC, AND BANK NOTE WERE SOME OF THEM.
Owen Jones. Color plate from The Grammar of Ornament. 1856
iGreat Exhibition of 1851: New consciousness of the industrial era. Idea conceived by Prince Albert.
iiEra of Pictorial Magazine
A RT S AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT Throughout the nineteenth century book design and quality went down, with a few exceptions. One of these exceptions was William Pickering; he was an apprentice at age fourteen. By the time he was twenty-four he owned his own bookshop, which specialized in old and rare volumes. The Century Guild was established in 1882 that was led by Arthur H. Mackmurdo. In 1884 they published the Century Guild Hobby Horse, which was the first magazine devoted to visual art. William Morris created his first typeface, Golden, which was based on the Venetian roman faces. William H. Hooper engraved decorative boarders at for the Kelmscott Press. The private press movement soon started, and then book designs began to show and inspiration of a renaissance of arts and crafts, new typefaces, and improvements. During the arts and crafts movement Morris F. Benton designed around 225 typefaces. One of his faces, Century Schoolbook, was widely used in textbooks.
ART
NOUVEAU Art nouveau lasted from 1890-1910 and used all forms of design. It was also the bridge between Victorian and modernism. Many writers and artists started to work more closely together. With many advances, art nouveau became expedited and started to spread throughout the world. Cheret and Grasset played a major role in the transition. Cheret was named to the Legion of Honor by the French government in 1890 for creating a new branch of art that advanced printing and served the needs of commerce and industry (meggs 202). English art nouveau was more concerned with graphic design and illustration. French art nouveau developed further during the 1880s. Graphic design, more ephemeral and timely than most other art forms, began to move rapidly toward the floral phase of art nouveau as Cheret, Grasset, Toulouse-Lautrec, and especially Mucha developed its graphic motifs (meggs 213).
MODERNISM
With Modernism came Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and Expressionism. Cubism was a design concept independent of nature; it was boldly chiseled geometric planes. Paul Cezanne was a major influence and said “treat nature in terms of the cylinder and the sphere and the cone.� Picasso and Georges Braque made cubism and art movement. They studied the planes of the subject matter. Futurism was created by and Italian poet Filippo Marinetti after he published his Manifesto of Futurism in the Paris newspaper. The futurist concept that writing and typography could become a concrete and expressive form has been a sporadic preoccupation of poets dating back at least to the work of the Greek poet Simias of Rhodes (meggs 261). Dada was a reaction to World War I and was claimed to be anti-art and had negative and destructive elements. It quickly spread from Zurich to other European cities. The Dadaist were mocking and defaming a society gone insane. Surrealism was created from Dada and a group of young French writers and poets. Several of the surrealist influenced visual communication. Expressionism was meant to depict subjective emotions and personal responses. Photography and the modern movement also arose within modernism.
BAUHAUS
Bauhaus was intensely visionary and drew inspiration from expressionism. Advanced ideas about form color and space were integrated into the design vocabulary when Der Blaue Reiter painter Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky joined the staff in 1920 (meggs 327). Laszlo Moholy-Nagy had a massive impact. He was a restless experimenter who studied law before turning to art. Gropius and Moholy-Nagy collaborated as editors for Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar from 1919 to 1923. During the Dessau period from 1925 to 1932 the Bauhaus identity and philosophy came to full fruition. Bauhaus copied the De Stijl and constructivist movements. Kandinsky, Klee, Gropius, Mondrian, Moholy-Nagy, and Van Doesburg were all appointed as professors.
THE NEW T YPOGRAPHY
Jan Tschichold was an important role in new typography. The passion for the new typography created a spate of sans-serif styles. In his highly personal and poetic little volume Essay on Typogrphy, Gill first advanced the concept of unequal line lengths in text type. Morison, typographic adviser to the British Monotype Corporation and the Cambridge University press, supervised the design of a major twentieth-century newspaper and magazine typeface commissioned by the Times of London in 1931. The isotype movement was an important movement toward developing a “ world language without words.�