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Illuminated Manuscripts
The vibrant luminosity of gold leaf, as it reflected light from the pages of handwritten books, gave the sensation of the page being literally illuminated; thus, this dazzling effect gave birth to the term illuminated manuscript. Today this name is used for all decorated and illustrated handwritten books produced from the late Roman Empire until printed books replaced manuscripts after typography was developed in Europe around 1450. -
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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. -
Jun 18, 1000
The Greek alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet was adopted by the ancient Greeks and spread through their city-states around 1000 BCE. The oldest known inscriptions date from the eighth century BCE, but the Greek alphabet occupying a major position in the evolution of graphic communication, may have developed earlier. The Greeks took the Phoenician or North Semitic alphabet and changed five consonants to vowels. It is not known for certain who transported the alphabet from Phoenicia to Greek . -
Jun 1, 1300
Early European block printing
The origins of woodblock printing in Europe are shrouded in mystery. After the Crusades opened Europe to Eastern influence, relief printing arrived on the heels of paper. Playing cards and religious-image prints were early manifestations. Circumstantial evidence implies that, like paper, relief printing from woodblocks also spread westward from China. By the early 1300s pictorial designs were being printed on textiles in Europe. Card playing was popular, and in spite of being outlawed. -
Jun 1, 1397
The Korean alphabet
The Korean monarch Sejong (1397–1450 CE) introduced Hangul, the Korean alphabet, by royal decree in 1446. Hangul is one of the most scientific writing systems ever invented. Although the spoken Korean and Chinese languages are totally different, Koreans were using the complex Chinese characters for their written language. Sejong developed a simple vernacular alphabet of fourteen consonant and ten vowel signs to put literacy within the grasp of ordinary Korean citizens. -
Jun 1, 1400
Printing Comes to Europe
Typography is the term for printing with independent, movable, and reusable bits of metal or wood, each of which has a raised letterform on one face. This dry definition belies the immense potential for human dialogue and the new horizons for graphic design that were unleashed by this extraordinary invention in the mid-1400s by a restless German inventor whose portrait and signature are lost to the relentless passage of time. The invention of typography ranks near the creation of writing. -
Jun 1, 1444
Movable typography in Europe
With the availability of paper, relief printing from woodblocks, and growing demand for books, the mechanization of book production by such means as movable type was sought by printers in Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Italy. In Avignon, France, goldsmith Procopius Waldfoghel was involved in the production of “alphabets of steel” around 1444, but with no known results. The Dutchman Laurens Janszoon Coster (c. 1370–c. 1440) . -
May 18, 1450
The German Illustrated Book
Gutenberg's invention of typography in the 1450s and the end of the fifteenth century. (The traditional end-date is completely arbitrary; this chapter traces the logical continuation of trends in design and typography into the early 1500s.) Printing spread rapidly. By 1480 twenty-three northern European towns, thirty-one Italian towns, seven French towns, six Iberian towns, and one English town had presses. By 1500 printing was practiced in over 140 towns. -
Jun 1, 1450
Copperplate engraving
During the same time and in the same section of Europe that Johann Gutenberg invented movable type, an unidentified artist called the Master of the Playing Cards created the earliest known copperplate engravings Engraving is printing from an image that is incised or cut down into the printing surface. To produce a copperplate engraving, a drawing is scratched into a smooth metal plate. Ink is applied into the depressions, the flat surface is wiped clean, and paper is pressed. -
Jun 1, 1465
Typography spreads from Germany
Italy, which was at the forefront of Europe's slow transition from the feudal medieval world to the Renaissance, sponsored the first printing press outside Germany. Although fifteenth-century.
Italy was a political patchwork of city-states, monarchies, republics, and papal domains, it was at the zenith of its wealth and splendid patronage of the arts and architecture. In 1465 Cardinal Turrecremata of the Benedictine monastery at Subiaco invited two printers, Conrad Sweynheym (1477) -
Jun 1, 1470
Graphic design of the Italian Renaissance
a five-year monopoly on printing in Venice, publishing the first book, Epistolae ad familiares (Letters to Friends), by Cicero, in 1469. His innovative and handsome roman type cast off some of the Gothic qualities found in the fonts of Sweynheym and Pannartz; he claimed that it was an original invention and managed to restrict it to his exclusive use until his death in 1470. Printed in partnership with his brother, Wendelin, da Spira's. -
Jun 1, 1500
The inavation
Cave paintings Early human markings over two hundred thousend years old. From the early Paleolithic to the Neolithic period (35,000 to 4000 BCE), early Africans and Europeans left paintings in caves, including the Lascaux caves in southern France and Altamira in Spain. Black was made from charcoal, and a range of warm tones, from light yellows through red-browns, were made from red and yellow iron oxides. This palette of pigments was mixed with fat as a medium. -
The Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet came to the Romans from Greece by way of the ancient Etruscans a people whose civilization on the Italian peninsula reached its height during the sixth century BCE. After the letter G was designed by one Spurius Carvilius (c. 250 BCE) to replace the Greek letter Z (zeta), which was of little value to the Romans, the Latin alphabet contained twenty-one letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R (which evolved as a variation of P), S, T, V. -
Art Nouveau
Increased trade and communication between Asian and European countries during the late nineteenth century caused a cultural collision; both East and West experienced change as a result of reciprocal influences. Asian art provided European and North American artists and designers with approaches to space, color, drawing conventions, and subject matter that were radically unlike Western traditions. This revitalized graphic design during the last decade of the nineteenth century. -
Graphic Design and the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, which is usually said to have occurred first in England between 1760 and 1840, was a radical process of social and economic change. Energy was a major impetus for the conversion from an agricultural society to an industrial one. Until James Watt (1736–1819) 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 Arts and Crafts Movement and Its Heritage
Over, the course of the nineteenth century, the quality of book design and production declined, with a few notable exceptions, such as the books by the English publisher William Pickering (1796–1854). At age fourteen Pickering apprenticed to a London bookseller and publisher; at age twenty-four he established his own bookshop specializing in old and rare volumes. Shortly thereafter, Pickering, with his deep love of books and outstanding scholarship, began a publishing program. -
The Influence of Modern Art
The first two decades of the twentieth century were a time of ferment and change that radically altered all aspects of the human condition. The social, political, cultural, and economic character of life was caught in fluid upheaval. In Europe, monarchy was replaced by democracy, socialism, and communism. Technology and scientific advances transformed commerce and industry. -
The Genesis of Twentieth-Century Design
The turn of a century invites introspection. As one century closes and a new one begins, writers and artists begin to question conventional wisdom and speculate on new possibilities for changing the circumstances of culture. For example, the end of the eighteenth century gave birth to a new category of typeface design, which is still called the modern style. -
The Asian Contribution
Western civilization dawned from obscure sources along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia and along the course of the Nile River in Egypt. The origins of the extraordinary civilization that developed in the vast, ancient land of China are shrouded in similar mystery. Legend suggests that by the year 2000 BCE a culture was evolving in virtual isolation from the pockets of civilization in the West.some of many innovations developed by the ancient Chinese. -
Cretan pictographs
The Minoan civilization that existed on the Mediterranean island of Crete ranks behind only Egypt and Mesopotamia in its early level of advancement in the ancient Western world. Minoan or Cretan picture symbols were in use as early as 2800 BCE. Short pictographic inscriptions written as early as 2000 BCE have been found. About 135 pictographs survive; they include figures, arms, other parts of the body, animals, plants, and some geometric symbols. By 1700 BCE these pictographs seem to -
Egyptian hieroglyphs
the Egyptians retained their picture-writing system, called hieroglyphics (Greek for “sacred carving,” after the Egyptian for “the god's words”), for almost three and a half millennia. The earliest known hieroglyphs date from about 3100 BCE, and the last known hieroglyphic inscription was carved in 394 CE, many decades after Egypt had become a Roman colony. The last people to use this language system were Egyptian temple priests. They were so secretive that Greek and Roman scholars o -
The earliest writting
The earliest written records are tablets that apparently list commodities by pictographic drawings of objects accompanied by numerals and personal names inscribed in orderly columns. An abundance of clay in Sumer made it the logical material for record keeping, and a reed stylus sharpened to a point was used to draw the fine, curved lines of the early pictographs. The clay mud tablet was held in the left hand, and pictographs were scratched in the surface with the wooden style.
