What is the History of Graphic Design?

The compelling, if somewhat obscure, paintings in the caves of Alsace around 14,000 BC and the birth of written language in the third or fourth millennium BC are both significant milestones in the history of graphic design and other fields which hold roots to graphic design. The Book of Kills is a very beautiful and very early example of graphic design in a form that would be acceptable even today. The Book is a lavishly illustrated hand-written copy of the Christian Bible created by Celtic monks in the ninth century AD. Johann Gutenberg’s introduction of movable type in Europe made books widely available. The earliest books produced by Gutenberg’s press and others of the era (the Incunabula).

Only through the design of Aldus Mantis did the book begin to have a structure that would become the benchmark by which the design of future books, even as late as the 20th century, would be judged. Graphic design of this era is called either Old Style (especially the typefaces which these early typographers used), or Humanist, after the predominant philosophical school of the time. Graphic design, after Gutenberg saw a gradual evolution rather than any significant change, in the late 19th century when, especially in the United Kingdom, an effort was made to create a firm division between the fine and the applied arts.

From 1891 to 1896 William Morris’ Kelmscott Press published some of the most significant of the graphic design products of the Arts and Crafts movement, and made a very lucrative business of creating books of great stylistic refinement and selling them to the wealthy for a premium you can visit www.magic-mini-site.com Morris proved that a market existed for works of graphic design and helped pioneer the separation of design from production and from fine art. The work of the Kelmscott Press is characterized by its decadence and by its obsession with historical styles. This historicism was, however, historically important as it amounted to the first significant reaction to the stale state of nineteenth-century graphic design. Morris’ work, along with the rest of the Private Press movement, directly influenced Art Nouveau and is indirectly responsible for developments in early twentieth century graphic design in general. Piety Mandarin, born in 1872, is often called the father of graphic design. Although he was a fine artist (not a graphic designer) his use of grids inspired the basic structure of the modern advertising layout known also as the grid system, used commonly today by graphic designers.

The term Graphic Design was first coined by U.S. book designer and type designer William Addison Diggings in the early 20th C. 20th century Famous SS Normandy poster by Adolph Moron Cassandre.Modern Design of the early 20th century, much like the fine art of the same period, was a reaction against the decadence of typography and design of the late 19th century or go to www.impacts-audio.com The hallmark of early modern typography is the sans-serif typeface. Early Modern (not to be confused with the other modern era of the 18th and 19th centuries) typographers such as Edward Johnston and Eric Gill after him were inspired by vernacular and industrial typography of the latter nineteenth century.

The signage in the London Underground is a classic of this era and used a font designed by Edward Johnston in 1916. Jan Tschichold codified the principles of modern typography in his 1928 book, New Typography. He later repudiated the philosophy he espoused in this book as being fascistic, but it remained very influential. Tschichold, Bauhaus typographers such as Herbert Bayer and Laszlo Mohole-Nagy, and El Lissitzky are the fathers of graphic design as we know it today. They pioneered production techniques and stylistic devices used throughout the twentieth century. Although the computer has altered production forever, the experimental approach to design they pioneered has become more relevant than ever. The following years saw graphic design in the modern style gain widespread acceptance and application. A booming post-World War II American economy established a greater need for graphic design, mainly advertising and packaging. The emigration of the German Bauhaus school of design to Chicago in 1937 brought a “mass-produced” minimalism to America; sparking a wild fire of postmodern architecture and design.

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What is the History of Graphic Design?