History of Graphic Design- 01/17
Early art- pure function
Literacy takes away power
Terms and Topics
Lascaux scribes
-writes manuscripts
Sumerian Illuminated manuscript
-spreads knowledge
Cuniform Book of Kells
-early style of wrting
Fall of Rome(476 AD)- Celtic Writing- Charlemagne
As society gets better, technology gets better, when technology gets better, communication gets better
800Ad-Charlemagne crowned holy roman emperor
-saw importance of literacy
Alcuin of York- head scribe
- create standardized writing system
-Caroline minuscule
1400AD- playing cards
- form of entertainment for all
- changed thinking- sequence, strategy, memory
- printing makes reading materials accessible to all
Ars Moriendi- Book on Death
-Church propaganda
Gutenberg- brings systems together to create movable type
-regular guy
Environment for type revolution
-Growing middle class
-Increased literacy
-increase in University population
-monopoly on literacy taken from church
-demand for writing
develops alloy, ink, press, type forms, ligatures.
Lasts till modern printing
Typography- printing with type, important advance
Gutenberg Bible-1455 Go to British library
Called the 42 line book- about 42 lines/page
210 copies- 180 on paper, 30 on velum- (need 5000 sheep)
Gothic type- even texture
1455- Fust sues Gutenberg, takes over production and bibles. Goes into business with foreman.
Forman may be responsible for quality of bible
Incunabula- baby carriage (literal), first 50 years of printing
Mianz, Germany center of printing
By 1500, 35 editions of 9 million books
Typographic printing is the major communications advance between the invention of writing and 20th century communication
1498- frames removed from images, allows negative space to interact, understanding of alignment
Exemplar page- example layout page
Swevyheyum and Pannartz- evolution to Roman letters
1465- printing based on humanistic writing
Rediscovery of classical text
1467- type drastically refined
1475-William Caxton- translates Stories of Troy in to English- First English Book
Calendarian- 1476
Tip in- inserted by hand after printing
1639- Steven Day brought printing to the Colonies
- first print-Book of Psalms, 1640
Rococo- fanciful language, ornate, time of inquiry and science
French king commissioned creation of royal typeface
- done with scientific principles and a grid of 64 units with 36 units each.
More throughout, planed than older fonts
Philipee Grandjean- craved typeface
Spur on lower case L indicated royal typeface
Manuel Typographique, Le Jeune- 1764 and 1768
Flurions- decorative type elements
Rise in popularity of copper plate printing
-allows artist to directly draw on plate in detail, extreme contrast in line weight
-influences letterform design
Days thoughts:
I find it fascinating that playing cards left the dramatic impression that it did. Its interesting that its introduction led to a whole new way of thinking including memory, strategy, and sequencing. Plus its also fascinating that much of what was created during this time such as format and layout have stayed very similar up until today.
Although I found the type video, which seems to be as old as type itself, difficult to watch, the process of printing type does fascinate me, especially with the inclusion of Tip-ins. After this class, i now want to take a look at the printing press and mess around with hand aligning type and experimenting with different processes.
Comments and Research:
When we were discussing the pages involving the exemplar pages, i noticed how the pages themselves were formatted in a way different from previous examples. The text blocks were justified to the left and right and not just center and images were treated the same way and were much larger. Were these formatting changes new at the time or had occurred earlier?
it would be the same way your final designs vary from the original sketches
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