-
Jun 4, 1000
Cave painting from Lascaux
Random placement and shifting scale signify prehistoric people's lack of structure and sequence in recording their experiences. -
Jul 17, 1100
Black stone duck weight, c. 3000 BCE
The cuneiform inscription dedicates this weight to the god Nanna by the King of Ur and confirms a weight of five minas. A mina weighed about 0.6 kilograms, or 18 ounces. -
May 5, 1200
Stamp-cylinder seal (“the Tyszkiewicz seal”), Hittite, 1650–1200 BCE.
Combining decorative ornamentation with figurative images, this most likely portrays a ritual, possibly with a sacrificial offering on the right. It has both an image on the side, for rolling, and an image on the bottom, for stamping. Because it allows images to be reproduced, the cylinder seal can be seen as a precursor to printing. -
Sep 8, 1500
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. -
An Epoch of Typographic Genius
After a drought of graphic-design creativity during the 1600s, the eighteenth century was an epoch of typographic originality. In 1692 the French king Louis XIV, who had a strong interest in printing, ordered a committee of scholars to develop a new typeface for the Imprimerie Royale, the royal printing office established in 1640 to restore quality. The new letters were to be designed by “scientific” principles. Headed by mathematician Nicolas Jaugeon, the academicians examined all previous alph -
Louis Simonneau, master alphabets for the Romain du Roi
These copperplate engravings were intended to establish graphic standards for the new alphabet. -
Period: to
Graphic Design and the Industrial Revolution
perfected the steam engine, which was deployed rapidly starting in the 1780s, animal and human power were the primary sources of energy. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the amount of energy generated by steam power increased a hundredfold. During the last three decades of the century, electricity and gasoline-fueled engines further expanded productivity. A factory system with machine manufacturing and divisions of labor was developed. New materials, particularly iron and steel, became -
title page from The Book of Thel
Publication of his General History of Quadrupeds in 1790 brought renown to Bewick and his technique, which became a major illustration method in
137
138
138
139
letterpress printing until the advent of photomechanical halftones nearly a century later. -
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. -
Pierre Didot, title page for Lettres d'une Péruvienne
As a child, Blake reported seeing angels in a tree and the prophet Ezekiel in a field. After completing an engraving apprenticeship and
135
136
studying at the Royal Academy, Blake opened a printing shop at age twenty-seven, where he was assisted by his younger brother Robert. Upon Robert's death three years later, Blake reported that he saw Robert's soul joyfully rising through the ceiling. Blake informed friends that Robert appeared to him in a dream and told him about a way to print his poem -
Egyptian hieroglyphs
Napoleon conducted an expedition to Egypt in an effort to sever the English land route to India. In August 1799, his troops were digging a foundation for an addition to the fortification in the Egyptian town of Rosetta, which they were occupying. A black slab was unearthed bearing an inscription in two languages and three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic script, and Greek. -
Period: to
decorative three-dimensional fonts, 1835.
Johann Heinrich Meyer foundry in Braunschweig, Germany, decorative three-dimensional fonts -
Aloys Senefelder, pages from A Complete Course of Lithography
This is an English translation of Vollständiges Lehrbuch der Steindruckerey (Complete Textbook of Lithography) published in 1818. -
William Playfair, Chart no. 1 from A Letter on Our Agricultural Distresses
This hand-colored engraving uses a fever and bar chart to depict “in one view the price of the quarter of wheat.” -
William Playfair, Chart no. 3 from A Letter on Our Agricultural Distresses
This hand-colored engraving also uses a bar chart to depict the cost of wheat. -
Joseph Niépce, the first photograph from nature
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. -
William Henry Fox Talbot, the first photographic negative
This image was made on Talbot's light-sensitive paper in a camera obscura, which pointed toward the leaded glass windows in a large room of his mansion, Lacock Abbey. -
Stephenson Blake foundry, Clarendon specimen
The Stephenson Blake foundry produced a larger and more condensed version of Clarendon. -
William Henry Fox Talbot, print from the first photographic negative
The sun provided the light source to contact-print the negative to another sheet of sensitized paper, producing this positive image of the sky and land outside the windows. -
Louis Jacques Daguerre, Paris boulevard
In this early daguerreotype, the wagons, carriages, and pedestrians were not recorded because the slow exposure could only record stationary objects. On the lower left street corner, a man stopped to have his boots polished. He and the polisher were the first people ever to be photographed. -
William Henry Fox Talbot, camera-less shadow picture of flowers
By sandwiching the flowers between his photographic paper and a sheet of glass and exposing the light-sensitive emulsion to sunlight, Talbot invented the photogram, later extensively used as a design tool by designers such as László Moholy-Nagy. -
Sir Charles Barry with A. W. N. Pugin, the House of Lords in the British Houses of Parliament, constructed
The Gothic Revival evolved from ornamental details inspired by Gothic architecture. -
Henry Caslon, Ionic type specimen
Bracketing refers to the curved transition from the main strokes of a letterform to its serif. Egyptian type replaced the bracket with an abrupt angle; Ionic type restored a slight bracket. -
Pages from Talbot's The Pencil of Nature
The first book to be illustrated entirely with photographs, The Pencil of Nature had original prints mounted onto the printed page. Plate VII is a photogram. (The use of modern-style type with ornate initials is typical of early Victorian book design.) -
Title page for The Pencil of Nature,
This design demonstrates the eclectic confusion of the Victorian era. Medieval letterforms, baroque plant designs, and Celtic interlaces are combined into a dense symmetrical design. -
David O. Hill and Robert Adamson, Reverend Thomas H. Jones, c
The painter's attention to lighting, characterization, placement of hands and head, and composition within the rectangle replaced the mug-shot sensibility of earlier photographers. -
specimen of an early Clarendon
An adaptation of Ionic that was even subtler than the development of Ionic from Egyptian, Clarendon styles were wildly popular after their introduction. When the three-year patent on Clarendon expired, other founders issued numerous imitations and piracies. -
Joseph Morse, multicolored woodcut poster
The heroic scale—262 by 344 centimeters (8.5 by 11 feet)—permitted life-sized figures to tower before the headline “Five Celebrated Clowns Attached to Sands, Nathan Co.'s Circus.” -
Owen Jones, color plate from The Grammar of Ornament,
This plate shows patterns found in the arts and crafts of India. -
F. T. Nadar, “Sarah Bernhardt
The famous actress took Paris by storm and became a major subject for the emerging French poster. -
Mathew Brady, “Dunker Church and the Dead,”
Made in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, this photograph shows how visual documentation took on a new level of supposed authenticity with photography. Due to technical limitations of the medium, photographers such as Brady could only photograph the results of battles, not the actual fighting. This has led to speculation by scholars that scenes captured by photographs were “staged” or otherwise altered. For example, scholars have suggested that the b -
After A. H. Wald, cover for Harper's Weekly
Engraved after a sketch by a “visual journalist” in the field, this cover is a forerunner of newsmagazine coverage of current events. Though constructed by several different artists and dramatized to create an engaging illustration, images such as these gave Harper's readers visual evidence of significant historical events. -
Attributed to Mathew Brady, photograph
“Freedmen on the Canal Bank at Richmond,” 1865. The photographer supplied the visual evidence needed by the illustrator to document an event. -
Julia Margaret Cameron, “Alfred Lord Tennyson
Moving beyond descriptive imagery, Cameron's compelling psychological portraits revealed her subjects' inner being. -
Timothy H. O'Sullivan, “Sand Dunes near Sand Springs, Nevada
Expedition photographers, many of whom were financed by the government, documented the American West. O'Sullivan's photography wagon—isolated by the sand dunes—becomes a symbol of lonely journeys over vast distances. -
John H. Bufford's Sons, “Swedish Song Quartett” poster
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. -
Forst, Averell & Co., poster for the Hoe printing press
This press made mass editions of chromolithographs possible. -
Morris Père et Fils (letterpress printers) and Emile Levy (lithographer), “Cirque d'hiver” poster
Performers are presented almost as surrealistic butterfly women. -
Morris Père et Fils (letterpress printers) and Emile Levy (lithographer), “Cirque d'hiver” poster
Performers are presented almost as surrealistic butterfly women. -
Thomas Nast, political cartoon from Harper's Weekly
This double-page image was posted throughout New York City on election day. -
Thomas Nast, political cartoon from Harper's Weekly,
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!” -
Walter Crane, page from Absurd ABC
Animated figures are placed against a black background; large letterforms are integrated with the imagery. Crane designed several alphabet books, each one unlike the others. -
John Macdonald, wood engraving, Freedmen on the Canal Bank at Richmond
The tonality of the photographer's image was reinvented with the visual syntax of wood-engraved line. -
Illustration of Moss's photographic department, from Scientific American
When this major science journal reported on the rise of photoengraving, it revealed that, unknown to its readers, thousands of photoengravings had been used side by side with hand engravings during the 1870s with no recognizable differences. -
Randolph Caldecott, illustration from Hey Diddle Diddle, c
Oblivious to the outlandish elopement, Caldecott's dancing dinnerware moves to a driving musical rhythm. -
Cover of The New Block ABC with Nursery Rhymes, c.
The playful imagery served to make the blocks entertaining while also serving their didactic purpose. -
and 9–38. Stephen H. Horgan, experimental photoengraving
This, the first halftone printing plate to reproduce a photograph in a newspaper, heralded the potential of photography in visual communications. -
Eadweard Muybridge, plate published in The Horse in Motion,
Sequence photography proved the ability of graphic images to record time-and-space relationships. Moving images became a possibility. -
Krebs Lithographing Company, poster for the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition
A buoyant optimism in industrial progress is conveyed. -
Louis Prang, Valentine card,
Chromolithography. This sentimental card is a good example of the range of tone and color that could be achieved with chromolithography. -
Richard G. Tietze, poster for Harper's Magazine
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. -
W. J. Morgan and Co., Cleveland, lithographic theater poster
Montage illustrations become overlapping planes with varied scale and spatial depth. -
S. S. Frizzall (artist) and J. H. Bufford's Sons (printers), poster for the Cleveland and Hendricks presidential campaign
The loose style of the flags and other symbolic imagery framing the candidates emphasizes the extreme realism of the portraits. -
Kate Greenaway, page from A Apple Pie
By leaving out the background, Greenaway simplified her page designs and focused on the figures. -
Paul Nadar, “Nadar Interviewing Chevreul,”
The words spoken by the one-hundred-year-old chemist were recorded below each photograph to produce a visual-verbal record of the interview. -
Schumacher & Ettlinger, lithographers, cover and pages from Our Navy premium booklet
Complex illusions are created by contrasting scale and perspective. -
Advertisement for the Kodak camera
George Eastman's camera, simple enough for anyone “who can wind a watch,” played a major role in making photography every person's art form. -
Jan Toorop, poster for Delftsche Slaolie (Delft Salad Oil)
Printed in yellow and lavender, this poster becomes kinetic through its undulating linear rhythms and close-valued complementary colors. -
Giovanni Mataloni, Brevetto Auer poster
-
Margaret and Frances Macdonald with J. Herbert McNair, poster for the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts
The symbolic figures have been assigned both religious and romantic interpretations. -
This paper model of the Hoe “quadruple web-perfecting press,” printed using chromolithography, was published on 13 Septembe
in a supplement to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. -
Margaret Macdonald, bookplate design,
Reproduced in Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring) in 1901 as part of an article on the Glasgow group, this design depicts Wisdom protecting her children within the leaflike shelter of her hair before a symbolic tree of knowledge, whose linear structure is based on Macdonald's metalwork. -
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, poster for the Scottish Musical Review
In this towering image that rises 2.5 meters (over 8 feet) above the spectator, complex overlapping planes are unified by areas of flat color. The white ring and birds around the figure create a strong focal point. -
Frank Lloyd Wright, first chapter opening spread for The House Beautiful,
An underlying geometric structure imposed a strong order upon the intricacy of Wright's textural design -
Otto Eckmann, Jugend cover
Jugendstil graphics often blended curvilinear stylization with traditional realism. -
J. H. and J. M. de Groot, Driehoeken bij ontwerpen van ornament (Triangles in the Design of Ornament), published by Joh. G. Stemler & Cz., Amsterdam,
This is one of many Dutch books that provided instruction on the construction of art nouveau ornaments. -
Jan Toorop, binding for Psyche, by Louis Couperus, published by L. J. Veen, Amsterdam
Psyche is a symbolic, tragic, and erotic fairy tale of Princess Psyche, Prince Eros, and the winged stallion Chimera. Psyche was a princess from the Land of Today and longed for the Land of Tomorrow. She was born with two useless little wings with which she wished to soar to other realms. One day while at her father's palace, she saw in the ephemeral cloud shapes a knight on the blond winged steed called Chimera. As depicted on the binding, Chimera eventually became reality and in Psyche's death -
Peter Behrens, The Kiss
This six-color woodcut, controversial for its androgynous imagery, was first reproduced in Pan magazine. -
Hans Christiansen, Jugend cover
The stylized curves of the letterforms echo the curves of the illustration's flat shapes. -
Hans Christiansen, page design for Jugend
Decorative motifs created lyrical environments for poetry. -
Currier Lithograph Co., lithographic poster
This promotion of Buffalo Bill's traveling Wild West show, a popular spectacle featuring horseback-riding cowboys and Indians, helped strengthen the myth of the American West at the same time that the nation was becoming increasingly urban. A portrait of Buffalo Bill on horseback appears at the right. -
Peter Behrens, trademark for Insel-Verlag,
The ship in a circle perched on art nouveau waves typifies Jugendstil trademark design. -
L. Prang and Company and others, c
This collection shows a range of graphic ephemera printed by chromolithography. -
Chris Lebeau, binding for De stille kracht (The Quiet Power) by Louis Couperus, published by Van Holkema en Warendorf, Amsterdam,
The binding uses the batik process that was indigenous to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). -
Talwin Morris, binding for The Book of the Home, No. 3
Morris applied his generic style to widely diverse publications. -
Franz Laskoff, Monte Tabor poster
-
Otto Eckmann, cover for an Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft catalogue
Brush-drawn lettering and ornaments express the kinetic energy of electricity -
Adolfo Hohenstein, Bitter Campari poster
-
Marcello Dudovich, Bitter Campari poster,
The message is unambiguous as Dudovich equates sensual pleasure with that derived from Bitter Campari. -
Otto Eckmann, type specimen for Eckmann Dekorative Schrift
The blending of contradictory influences—medieval, Asian, and art nouveau—produced an extremely popular type family, Eckmannschrift, which included Decorative Scripts. -
S. H. de Roos, design for De vrouwen kwestie, haar historische ontwikkeling en haar economische kant
(The Woman Question, Her Historical Development and Her Economical Side), by Lily Braun, published by A. B. Soep, Amsterdam, -
Leonetto Capiello, E. & A. Mele & C. poster
-
Peter Behrens, page design for Jugend
Evoking peacock feathers and Egyptian lotus designs, an abstract column rises between two columns of textura-inspired type. -
Jessie Marion King, double title pages for William Morris's The Defence of Guenevere
Vigorous energy and fragile delicacy, seemingly contradictory qualities, characterize King's work. -
Stereocard depicting President Theodore Roosevelt delivering his inaugural address,
-
Harrild and Sons, London, wood-type fonts
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. -
This classic Metlicovitz poster exudes an optimistic elegance.
Internationale Milan inaugurating the Simplon Tunnel -
Talwin Morris, bindings for the Red Letter Shakespeare series, c.
A standardized format and subtle graphic lyricism were achieved in economical commercial editions. -
Talwin Morris, page ornaments from the Red Letter Shakespeare series, c.
The name for this small, modestly priced set derives from its two-color printing with character names in red. Between the introduction and the play, each volume had a graceful black ornament with a red oval. -
Leonetto Capiello, Cinzano poster
Capiello's posters consistently display a joyful and exuberant energy. -
Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Calzaturificio di Varese poster
This classic Metlicovitz poster exudes an optimistic elegance. -
. Edward Johnston, Johnston's Railway Type
These elemental letterforms were prototypes for reductive design. -
Period: to
Alexey Brodovitch, photography by Herbert Matter, Harper's Bazaar cover, June 1940.
-
Paul Rand, cover for Direction magazine, December
The red dots are symbolically ambiguous, becoming holiday decorations or blood drops. -
Paul Rand, Jazzways yearbook cover,
Collage technique, elemental symbolic forms, and dynamic composition characterized Rand's work in the late 1930s and 1940s. -
Paul Rand, Ohrbach's advertisement,
A combination of elements—logotype, photograph, decorative drawing, and type—are playfully unified -
Paul Rand, cover for Thoughts on Design
A photogram, with several exposures of an abacus placed on photographic paper in the darkroom, becomes a metaphor of the design process—moving elements around to compose space—and provides a visual record of the process. -
Paul Rand, poster for the American Institute of Graphic Art,
A red “A. I. G. A.” plays hide-and-seek against the green background, as a pictographic clown face does the same with an organic abstraction. -
Handbill for an excursion train
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! -
Fremont rock painting from San Raphael Swell, c. 2000–1000 BCE.
The presence of what appear to be spear marks in the sides of some of these animal images indicates that they were used in magical rites designed to gain power over animals and success in the hunt. -
The Riverside Print Company of Milwaukee, poster for C. W. Parker Company's Carry-Us-All portable carousels, undated
Parker's carousels, manufactured in Kansas, were very popular in Midwestern nomadic carnivals. -
The Modernist Era: Graphic design in the first half of the twentieth century
-
Package designs chromolithographed on tin for food and tobacco products
used bright flat colors, elaborate lettering, and iconic images to create an emblematic presence for the product. -
Paul Rand, poster for the film No Way Out,
Rand's integration of photography, typography, signs, graphic shapes, and the surrounding white space stands in marked contrast to typical film posters.
