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38,000 BCE
Cave Paintings
Humans have always had a drive towards art. We have been using it with early cave paintings dating back to prehistoric times. Some examples vary from animals to hand imprints to events like hunting, and they’ve been found all over the world.
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3000 BCE
Sumerian written language
It’s easy to forget that alphabets are a man-made invention. As far as we know, the Sumerians created one of the first written languages, most likely as a means of recording trader inventories to ensure couriers didn’t steal anything on deliveries. https://99designs.com/blog/design-history-movements/history-graphic-design/ -
200
Advancements in Chinese printing
As far back as 200 CE, China used wood reliefs to print and stamp designs on silk clothes, and later paper. In 1040, Bi Sheng invented the world’s first movable type printing press out of porcelain, more than 400 years before Gutenburg brought a similar technology to Europe.
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700
Medieval calligraphy
In the Middle Ages, typography started to take off as people started using the letters and words themselves. Typography was one of only a few permissible ways of artistic expression.
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1100
European heraldry
The world’s first logo is the coat of arms, used as a symbol to represent family houses or territories. A house’s coat of arms aimed to represent the values, characteristics and styles of the people.
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1389
Storefront signage
In the 14th century, King Richard II of England made a law that ale houses must have signs out front so the public could find them easier. This was the origin of a beautiful tradition that survives to this day.
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1439
Invention of the Gutenberg press
With the Gutenberg press, people no longer had to rely on opening up literature to the masses and making it affordable. The Gutenberg press paved the way for more commercial uses of design, which ushered in the era of graphic design as we know it.
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1450
First logos
It was the printing industry that first used logos, although they were limited to just marks on their own documents.
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First print advertisements
The printing press gave way to the “coranto,” the precursor to the newspaper. And in the early 1600s, these corantos featured the first printed advertisements.
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Chromolithography
Technological advancements continued to fuel the progression of graphic design, such as the ability to print in color (chromolithography). While used primarily for recreating paintings for home decor, it also opened new doors for advertising. -
The Wiener Werkstätte (first graphic design agency)
The work done at the Wiener Werkstätte set the stage for the popular Bauhaus and Art Deco styles that soon followed.
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Staatliches Bauhaus founded
They had an ambitious goal: to create an artistic ideal that encompasses or synthesizes existing art forms into one perfect work. -
The term “graphic design” appears for the first time
In his article “New Kind of Printing Calls for New Design”, book designer William Addison Dwiggins first used the term “graphic design” to describe exactly what his role was in structuring and managing the visuals in book design.
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Paul Rand publishes Thoughts on Design
Legendary designer Paul Rand helped lead graphic design into its current form. He posted his theories and ideologies in the seminal work Thoughts on Design, which largely shaped the future of the entire graphic design industry.
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Adobe Photoshop
Photo manipulation created a whole new subcategory of graphic design, blending together elements of photography, illustration, and CGI.
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The Future
That pretty much brings us up to date with graphic design, but we don't know what the future of graphic design could bring to us.
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