history of graphic design
TRANSCRIPT
A Brief History of Graphic Design
Art0328
Graphic Design 1
Professor
Thomas F. Sweeney, Jr.
WHAT IS GRAPHIC DESIGN?
Graphic Designers give order to information, form to ideas, and expression and feeling to artifacts that document human experience. - Philip B. Meggs
Graphic design is the profession that plans and executes the design of visual communication according to the needs of audiences and contexts for which communication is intended. Graphic designers apply what they have learned about physical, cognitive, social, and cultural human factors to communication planning and the creation of appropriate form that interprets, informs, instructs, or persuades. Graphic designers use various technologies as means for creating visual form and as an environment through which communication takes place.
Graphic designers plan, analyze, create, and evaluate visual solutions to communication problems. Their work ranges from the development of strategies to solve large-scale communication problems, to the design of effective communication products, such as publications, computer programs, packaging, exhibitions, and signage. -NASAD
I. The Invention of Writing
Carved and sometimes painted on rocks throughout the western portion of the United States, these Petroglyphic figures, animals, and signs are similar to those found all over the world. 15,000 B.C.
The Cradle of Civilization
Sarcophagus of Aspalta, King of Ethiopia, c. 593-568 B.C.593-568 B.C.
Papyrus and Writing
Detail from a Chinese Poem, 208 B.C. Chinese Calligraphy
Li fangying, from the Album of Eight Leaves, number six, 1744 A.D.
Chinese Calligraphy
II. Illuminated
Manuscripts
The fourth angel from Beatus of Feernando and Sancha, 1047 A.D.
Spanish Pictorial Expressionism
Page fron the Ormesby Psalter, c. early 1300s A.D.
Romanesque and Gothic Manuscripts
III. Printing Comes
to Europe
Page from Ars Moriendi, 1466
Early European Block Printing
Fust and Schoeffer, page detail from Psalter in Latin, 1457
Movable Typography in Europe
IV. The German
Illustrated Book
Anton Koberger, page from the Nuremberg Chronicles, 1493
Origins of the Illustrated Typographic Book
Albrecht Durer, 1515
Nuremberg Becomes a Printing Center
V. Rennaissance Graphic Design
Erhard Ratdolt, Peter Loeslein, and Bernhard Maler, page for Calendarium, by Regiomontanus, 1476
Graphic Design of the Italian Renaissance
Simon de Colines, title page for De natura stirpium libri tres, 1536
Innovation Passes to France
Johann Oporinus (printer), page from De humani corporis fabrica, 1543
Basel and Lyons Become Design Centers
VI. An Epoch of Typographic Genius
Robert Clee, trade card for a liquor dealer, eighteenth century.
Graphic Design of the Rococo era
John Pine, page from Horatii’s Opera, Volume II, 1737.
Giambattista Bodoni, page from Manuale Tipografico, 1818.
The Modern Style
VII. Typography for an Industrial Age
Handbill for an excursion train, 1876
The Wood-Type Poster
IIX. Photography, The New Communications Tool
Above: Joseph Niepce, the first photograph from nature, 1826.
Below: Stephen H. Horgan, experimental photoengraving, 1880. The first halftone printing plate to reproduce a photograph in a newspaper.
The Inventors of Photography
Paul Nadar, Nadar Interviewing Cheveul, 1886. Visual-verbal record of an interview.
Defining the Photographic Medium
IX. Popular Graphics of the Victorian Era
L. Prang and Company and others, c. 1880-early 1900s. This collection shows a range of graphic ephemera printed by chromolithography.
The Design Language of Chromolithography
Krebs Lithographing Company, poster for Cincinnati Industrial Exposition, 1883.
Joseph A. Adams, page from Harper’s Illuminated and New Pictorial Bible, 1846. In the first page of the Old and the New Testaments, the two-column format with a central margin for annotation was disrupted by centering the first few verses.
The Rise of American Editorial and Advertising Design
X. Ukiyo-e and Art Nouveau
Ando Hiroshige, Evening Squall at Great Bridge near Atake, c. 1856-59. A moment in time is preserved as a transient human event.
Ukiyo-e
Katsushika Hokusai, South Wind, Clear Dawn, c. 1830-32. This woodcut of Mount Fuji struck by early morning light is also called Red Fuji.
Aubrey Beardsley, illustration for Oscar Wilde’s Salome, 1894.
English Art Nouveau
Emmanuel Orazi, poster for La Maison Moderne (The Modern House), 1905.
The Further Development of French Art Nouveau
Will Bradley, poster for Bradley: His Book, 1898
Art Nouveau Comes to America
XI. The Genesis of Twentieth-Century Design
Margaret and Frances Macdonald with J. Herbert McNair, poster for the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, 1895.
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Glasgow School
Koloman Moser, poster advertising Fromme’s calendar, 1899.
Peter Behrens and the New Objectivity
Peter Behrenes, AEG arc lamp catalogue page, 1907.
Peter Behrens and the New Objectivity
XII. Pictorial Modernism
Julius Klinger, poster for Germany’s eighth bond drive, 1917.
The Poster Goes to War
Lucian Bernhard, poster for a war-loan campaign, 1915.
The Poster Goes to War
Julius Gipkins, poster for an exhibition of captured airplanes, 1917.
The Poster Goes to War
Ludwig Hohlwein, recruiting poster, early 1940s.
The Poster Goes to War
Austin Cooper, poster for the London Underground, 1924.
Post-Cubist Pictorial Modernism
Schulz-Neudamm, cinema poster for Metropolis, 1926.
Post-Cubist Pictorial Modernism
XIII. New Language of Form
El Lissitzky, book cover for The Isms of Art, 1924
Russian Suprematism and Constructivism
Georgy and Vladimir Stenberg, film poster, undated.
Russian Suprematism and Constructivism
Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue, 1922.
De Stijl (The Style)
Henryk Berlewi, Plutos Chocolates brochure, page 6, 1925.
The Spread of Constructivism
XIV. The Bauhaus and the New Typography
Joost Schmidt, Bauhaus exhibition poster, 1923.
The Bahaus at Weimar
Herbert Bayer, exhibition poster, 1926. The Bahaus at Dessau
Jan Tschichold, brochure for his book, Die Neue Typographie, 1928.
Jan Tschichold, advertisement, 1932. Asymmetrical balance, a grid system, and a sequential progression of type weight and size determined by the words’ importance to the overall message are aspects of this design.
Jan Tschichold and the New Typography
Piet Zwart, folder, 1924. Independent Voices in the Netherlands
Piet Zwart, pages from the English-language NKF cableworks catalogue, 1926.
Independent Voices in the Netherlands
Herbert Matter, poster for Pontresina, 1935.
New Approaches to Photography
Joseph Binder, poster for New York World’s Fair, 1939.
XV. The Modern Movement in America
Immigrants to America
A.M. Cassandre, advertisement for CCA, 1938.
The flight from Fascism
Ben Cunningham (artist), Leo Lionni (art director), N.W. Ayer & Son (agency), CCA advertisement honoring Nevada, 1949.
After the War
Herbert Bayer, page from the World Geo-Graphic Atlas, 1953.
Information and Scientific Graphics
Ernst Keller, poster for the Rietburg Museum, undated.
XVI. The International Typographic Style
Pioneers in the Movement
Max Bill, exhibition poster, 1945.
Pioneers in the Movement
Max Huber, yearbook cover, 1951.
Pioneers in the Movement
Josef Muller-Brockmann, poster for an exhibition of lamps, 1975.
Design in Basel and Zurich
Paul Rand, cover for Direction magazine, 1940.
XVII. The New York School
Pioneers in the New York School
Henry Wolf, cover for Harper’s Bazaar, 1959.
An Editorial Design Revolution
Bert Steinhauser (art director), and Chuck Kollewe (writer), political-action advertisement, 1967.
The New Advertising
Herb Lubalin, type specimen page from U&lc (Upper and Lower Case), 1978.
Lou Dorfsman, (designer), and Edward Sorel (illustrator), ad for CBS Reports, 1964.
XIIX. Corporate Identity and Visual Systems
Design at CBS
Paul Rand, Westinghouse trademark, 1960.
Paul Rand, NeXT trademark, 1986.
Corporate Identification Comes of Age
Roger Cook and Don Shanosky, signage symbol system for the U.S. Department of Transportation, 1974.
The Federal Design Improvement Program
Pat Gorman and Frank Olinsky of Manhattan Design, MTV logo, 1981-1985.
The Music Television Logo
Armando Testa, rubber and plastic exhibition poster, 1972.
XIX. The Conceptual Image
The Polish Poster
The conceptual image in graphic design conveys not merely narrative information but ideas and concepts. Mental content joined perceived content as motif.
The Push Pin Studio approach (Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Reynolds Ruffins, Edward Sorel) was an attitude about visual communications, an openness about trying new forms and techniques as well as reinterpreting work from earlier periods, and an ability to integrate word and image into a conceptual and decorative whole.
Waldemar Swierzy, Jimi Hendrix poster, 1974.
American Conceptual Images
Milton Glaser, Bob Dylan poster, 1967. A graphic icon in the collective American experience.
American Conceptual Images
Anthon Beeke, (designer and photographer), poster for the Dutch Modern Art Fair in Amsterdam, 1997.
Design in the Netherlands
Michael Cronin and Shannon Terry, Beethoven Festival poster, 1983.
XX. Postmodern Design
The Memphis and San Francisco Schools
Bill Hill and Terry Irwin (creative directors) and Jeff Zwerner (designer), MetaDesign San Francisco (design firm), VizAbility Interactive CD-ROM screen designs, 1995.
XXI. The Digital Revolution Interactive Media and the Internet
Bill Hill and Terry Irwin (creative directors) and Jeff Zwerner (designer), MetaDesign San Francisco (design firm), VizAbility Interactive CD-ROM screen designs, 1995.
Human affairs are undergoing a new revolution comparable to the industrial revolution that launched the machine age. Electronic circuitry, microprocessors, and computer generated imagery threaten to radically alter our culture's images, communications processes, and the very nature of work itself. Graphic design, like many other spheres of activity, is experiencing profound changes. The graphic-design community is responding to this new age of electronic circuitry by an involvement in media graphics, systems design, and computer graphics.
The tools—as has happened so often in the past—are changing with the relentless advance of technology, but the essence of graphic design remains unchanged. That essence is to give order to information, form to ideas, and expression and feeling to artifacts that document human experience.
The need for clear and imaginative visual communications to relate people to their cultural, economic, and social lives has never been greater. As shapers of messages and images, graphic designers have an obligation to contribute meaningfully to a public understanding of environmental and social issues. Graphic designers have a responsibility to adapt new technology and to express their zeitgeist by inventing new forms and new ways of expressing ideas. The poster and the book, vital communications tools of the industrial revolution, will continue in the new age of electronic technology as art forms, and graphic designers will help to define and extend each new generation of electronic media.
Philip B. Meggs