Early Innovations in Visual Communication and Printing
15,000–10,000 BC: Pictographs and symbols in the Lascaux caves in southern France represent the first known visual communication.
3600 BC: The Blau Monuments, believed to be from modern Iraq, are considered to be the oldest artifact known to combine words and pictures.105 AD: Chinese government official Ts’ai Lun is credited with inventing paper.1045 AD: Pi Sheng, a Chinese alchemist, invents movable type, which allows characters to be individually placed for printing.
1276: Printing arrives in Europe with a paper mill in Fabriano, Italy.1450: Johann Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg is credited with perfecting the system for printing type in books.1460: Albrecht Pfister becomes the first to add illustrations to a printed book.
Revolutionary Changes to Typeface
1470: Nicolas Jenson, considered one of history’s greatest typeface designers, sets a new standard for the Roman type.1530: Claude Garamond opens the first type foundry, developing and selling fonts to printers.1722: The first Caslon Old Style font, which was later used for the printing of the Declaration of Independence, is developed.
The Industrial Revolution
1760: The Industrial Revolution begins and sets the stage for advances in graphic design production. 1796: Author Aloys Senefelder develops lithography, the first “planographic” printing method, which used a flat surface and set the stage for modern offset printing. 1800: Lord Stanhope invents the first printing press made of all cast-iron parts, which required one-tenth of the manual labor of previous presses and doubled the possible paper size. 1816: The first Sans-serif type font appears in a book.
Design Comes Into Its Own
1861: Williams Morris, a highly influential figure in design history, sets up his art decorating firm.1869: N.W. Ayer & Son, considered the first advertising agency, pioneers the open contract and utilizes fine art in design.1880: The development of the halftone screen allows for the first photo to be printed with a full range of tones.
1890: The Art Nouveau movement begins, making its way into all types of commercial design and utilized all types of arts.
Modern Design Styles Emerge
1900: The Futurism style of design emerges, dropping traditional features and concentrating on sharp, straight lines.1910: The Early Modern style is developed, which uses photos rather than illustrations and minimalist, geometric shapes.1910: Hero Realism is influenced by the World Wars, relying heavily on realistic illustrations of people and a strong message (for example, Rosie the Riveter).1919: The Bauhaus design school opens in Germany.1920: Art Deco, with its bold geometrics and high contrast colors, becomes mainstream.
Styles Closely Follow Pop Culture
1932: The Times New Roman typeface is created by Stanley Morrison and commissioned by the Times of London.1940: The Swiss style of design emphasizes negative space, asymmetrical layouts, and heavy use of Sans-serif type.1945: The Late Modern movement arises, dropping conventional layouts for more geometric designs.1947: Legendary graphic designer Paul Rand releases his first book, Thoughts on Design, influencing modern designers for decades to come.1950: Kitsch emerges, emphasizing high contrast, bold colors, fantastic imagery, and illustrations of dramatically posed people, which were popular in movie posters of the day.1957: Helvetica is developed by Max Miedinger and rapidly becomes a popular and standard typeface.1959: The magazine Communication Arts releases its first issue and quickly becomes an industry standard.1968: Inspired by hallucinations, the Psychedelic style emerges featuring swirls, obscure fonts transformed into shapes, and bright colors.1970: Illustrations that revolved around collages and overlaid elements became popular in the Post-Modern movement.
The Digital Revolution
1990: The first version of Adobe Photoshop is released, creating a revolution in the way graphic designers work.2000: Grunge design emerges, using rough textures to portray a gritty feeling.
2010: What became known as the Flat style emerges, emphasizing bright colors, minimalist two-dimensional shapes, sharp lines, and generous use of negative space.2016: Abstract Swiss style continues the minimalist trend, distorting and deconstructing designs in ways that seem random.2017: Cinemagraphs, photographs where one small movement is made, emerge to grab viewers’ attention in the clutter of on-screen marketing.
