New innovations for printing

New innovations for printing 1900’s

People had to wait until their food was wrapped and weighed since they were usually sold in loose. During the great depression from 1929 - 1939, there was a new change of self service, witch gave packaging the role of a silent-salesman. The growth economy, cheap materials and clean packaging allowed stores to display products on the shelf. This made the costumers to choose the product themselves and turned product packaging into a competition as the fabrics wanted the costumers attention so they would buy their products.

At this period most packaging only used typography to create a visual identity due to limitations of letterpress printing. Some used illustrations, but they could only be painted by hand. In 1930’s the invention of more reliable flexography printing made illustrations of food more realistic. This type of printing then became a standard for printing on packaging materials. During the early part of 1900’s, the technique was used extensively in food packaging in the United States.

Aloris Senefelder of Bavaria invented in 1798 a printer technique called “lithography”. Upon this discovery, colour lithographs called chromolithographs were used in the last half of 1800’s. Chromolithography is a method for making multi-colour prints and includes all lithographs. Designers of chromolithography prints drew all the elements, both text and image, as one piece. They created colourful posters to decorate, not only, walls of cities, but also household products. The limits of letterpress printing were no longer a problem and let designers be creative and invent fanciful ornaments and lettering styles at will. They developed ideas for packaged goods using iconic images, bright colours and embellished lettering.

A chromolithographic reproduction of a drawing by Miss O. Johnston

T. G. HILL, 2011, ‘THE ESSENTIALS OF ILLUSTRATION’, Reader in Vegetable Physiology in the University of London, University College.