Graphic design is a modern field that involves using visual combinations of text and images to communicate effectively through print. Earlier, printers would design printed materials themselves, but since the 1820s graphic designers have specialized in just the design aspects while printers handle production. Technological advances like steam power and iron printing presses in the 1820s led to an explosion in printed materials. This rise of print created a need for graphic designers as a distinct profession focused on visual communication. The Bauhaus further revolutionized design thinking in the early 20th century. Graphic design now plays a key role in advertising and branding as consumer culture expanded in the postwar era.

1. 9.2
graphic
design
A r t 1 0 0
U n d e r s t a n d i n g V i s u a l C u l t u r e
Yusaku KAMEKURA, 1955

2. what is graphic design?
visual communication using combinations of text and images,
organized to produce maximum impact
a modern design field of relatively recent origin, arising as
mass print communications reached ever wider audiences
earlier, the printer would design the printed material, choose
the font, etc.
1820 to present, the graphic designer handles only the
design aspects, the printer handles only the production
aspects
so, graphic design today is a profession, but if you've ever
made a flyer or a sign for a garage sale, you have done it

3. not professionally designed

4. early printed formats
 broadsheet/broadside:
 a single sheet that was used to print announcements or
notices on one side only.
 posted publicly and read/viewed by all
 the printer made the design decisions
 Bibles and other religious texts such as prayerbooks
 some treatises on science, law, government, etc. but this
will increase later

7. broadsheet or broadside
 a single sheet, printed on one side only, to be nailed up in
a public public and read/viewed by all
 the broadsheet has a long history continuing into the 19th
century
 used for public announcements, warnings, news bulletins,
and advertisements

8. Georg Mack the Elder
Broadsheet recording the sighting of
a comet at Nürnberg in November
1577
woodcut, colored single leaf

9. broadsheet petition
Dublin, 1647

10. broadsheet announcing British naval victory, 1805

11. broadsheet warning
1831

12. crime broadsheet
1831

13. broadsheet advertisement
1853

14. how does print matter?

15. Commerce
, opinion,
and coffee
in England,
1798

18. shaping a public sphere
• what makes a sphere public?
• people come together who are not necessarily from the same
background
• different classes represented
• different occupations
• different points of view
• but all equal as one voice in the conversation (do not have to
defer to your social superiors)
• a space of heterogeneous opinion

19. Salon conversation

20. coffeehouse vs. salon
COFFEEHOUSE
men only
public; open to all ranks for
price of a coffee
(mixed by social class)
SALON
men and women
by invitation only, so more
exclusive
(mixed by gender and
profession)

24. etching
1797
France

25. the print seller

26. From W.S.Lewis ‘Scrapbook of Advertisements’ at the Lewis Walpole Library.
[Pasted into back cover, a ‘miseries’ short piece clipped from an unidentified
newspaper or magazine. Undated (circa 1790?).]
LONDON STREETS, their UNWALKABILITY and other deliciae.
“In passing along a street well frequented with carriages,
but narrow in the footpath, you come to that barrier called
a Print-Shop. Besides the usual three rows of gapers, you
have here an agglomeration of two or three journeyman
bakers, with [sic] heir baskets reaching two feet beyond
their shoulders, the whole group of dutiful admirers of the
arts surmounted by a coal-heaver, whose feet fill up the
last inch of the pavement, and whose pointed shovel
project three feet over it. At every attempt you make to
double this promontory, the pole of a coach, ready to bob
you under the chin, corrects your impatience, and keeps
you within the sphere of the fine arts.”

27. James Gillray
Very Slippy Weather, Indeed!
1808

28. Vicesimus Knox, "On the Effects of Caricatures
exhibited at the Windows of Printsellers,"
Winter Evenings (London: 2 vols. Charles
Dilly, 3d. ed., 1795): 139-144.
“The lower classes in London, it might be
supposed, have not time, inclination, or ability,
to read much, but their minds are filled with
ideas, not only by the multitude of occurrences,
but also by the prints that are obtruded on their
notice, in the windows of shops conspicuously
situated in the most frequented streets. And I
believe, they often receive impressions, either
favourable, or unfavourable, to their honesty
and happiness as they loiter at a window, with a
burden on their backs, and gape, unmindful of
their toil, at the comical productions of the
ingenious designer.”

29. Vicesimus Knox, "On the Effects of Caricatures
exhibited at the Windows of Printsellers,"
Winter Evenings (London: 2 vols. Charles
Dilly, 3d. ed., 1795): 139-144.
“ The mode of ridiculing by prints has
some advantages over that by writing and
argument. Its effect is instantaneous; and
they who cannot read, or have not sense
enough to comprehend, a refined piece of
raillery, are able to see a good caricature,
and to receive a powerful impression from
it.”

31. stereotype,
caricature,
satire
Charles Philipon, Les Poires,
Charivari, 1832

33. New combination of
technologies in the 1820s
• steam power
• iron presses
• higher pressure for reproduction of images
• larger printing area
• endgrain wood engraving (produces harder, smoother
surface that can hold finer lines)
These technological improvements led to an explosion of print
materials in the 19th century.

34. design of printing press
London, 17th century

35. hand-cranked printing press,
but now in cast iron, allowing
greater pressure to be exerted
on the plates

36. Charles Frederick
Ulrich
The Village Printing
Shop, Haarlem,
Holland
1884
Oil on panel
21 1/4 x 22 15/16
inches

37. early design for steam-powered printing press

39. Published in The Illustrated London News, June 15, 1861, p. 555.

40. press room, Christian Herald, c. 1898

41. what happens when print is
mechanized?
 Ephemera
 tickets, menus, billheads, public notices and posters
 skilled designers, illustrators, caricaturists, beginning of
advertising profession
 Illustrated weeklies
 Wider publication of books and prints

45. the illustrated weeklies

53. cover of Harper’s Weekly,
February, 1895

54. associated changes in
advertising

55. These small text-based ads will give
way to an entirely different regime of
of advertising

58. Sir John Everett Millais
“A Child’s World”
1886

59. “Bubbles” Pears Soap ad, 1890

71. birth of graphic design
• ongoing innovation in production methods continues to
increase volume and variety of printed media
• communicating through print comes to be expected
• every single sheet of paper produced has to be designed,
by someone, at some point
• commercial artists separate into a distinct category
separate from fine artists
• trade publications and advertisements for graphic design
services demonstrate the rise of a professional group

72. Advertisement Calendar, 1885

73. 1880s-1910s
• as industrialization progresses, a craft revival gets
underway
• valuing the traditions of the handmade and the singular
vs. mass-produced items in quantity
• stylistically, folk and historical motifs coexist with abstract
forms (both geometric and organic)

74. Jugend No. 14
April 1896

77. Peter Behrens, Corporate logo design and publications for AEG, 1907

80. Peter Behrens
Space Heater
1911

82. 1910-1930
• new modern world demands new modern forms—in
architecture, product design, and graphic design as well
• Bauhaus revolutionized design thinking and design
education
• designers have a significant role in the creation of social
protest art and propaganda
• graphic design is a key player in the rise of consumer
culture; rise of brands
• commercial artists and layout designers are joined by art
directors as the profession becomes increasingly
differentiated

83. Bauhaus "Building House"
(1919-1928)
Walter Gropius was appointed
Director of the Academy of Fine
Arts in Weimar.
He merged it with School of Arts
and Crafts—no distinction
between the arts, all are
governed by the same basic
principles.
Collaboration and context were
key principles.

84. Bauhaus curriculum
• one fine art; one craft
• emphasis on properties
of materials
• technology and
techniques of mass
production
• aesthetic principles:
• economy of form
• fidelity to materials
• appropriate to function
Oskar Schlemmer, Bauhaus Stairway, 1932

91. 1930s and 1940s
• wartime imagery
• propaganda
• public service campaigns

100. 1960s
Pop, protest, and counterculture complicated the picture
rise of humor and anti-advertising
era of McLuhan's Understanding Media (1964): analysis of
different communications media and their impacts on our
human existence

103. layout, type, and
photography collaborate
to produce sensation

106. Jimms Nelson
Handbill for The Doors Concert, 1968

107. Sarah Whitcombe,
jacket design for
The Electric Kool-Aid
Acid Test, 1968

108. John Alcorn
7 Up
late 1960s

109. 1970s
• graphic designer's role expands from composing and
styling specific messages to creating total brand identities
• corporate logos drew on Bauhaus principles of universal
design
• television means brand identity must be coordinated
across a variety of platforms

110. Paul Rand (1914-1996)

114. Rand's impact
“He almost singlehandedly convinced business that design
was an effective tool. [. . .] Anyone designing in the 1950s
and 1960s owed much to Rand, who largely made it possible
for us to work. He more than anyone else made the
profession reputable. We went from being commercial artists
to being graphic designers largely on his merits.”
—Louis Danziger, 1996