The Origins of Graphic Design
~1500 BCE Chinese scribes develop their own writing system
868 BCE Diamond Sutra commissioned
196 BCE Rosetta Stone
1st Century - Old Roman cursive, minuscules and majuscules, rustic capitals written in a form similar to cursive "Scriptio Continua"
113 CE Column of Trajan dedicated - Square Capital inscription on the base is the most copied grouping of letters in history.
698 CE Lindisfarne Gospel. Over 200 leaves of text created by Eadfrith, the bishop of Lindisfarne (an island off the coast of England)
3rd Century - New Roman Cursive
4th Century - Unicials were all majuscules and made of a combination of Old Roman Cursive plus half-uncial (this was the miniscule from New Roman Cursive)
5th Century - collapse of Western Roman Empire, Europe no longer centralized. Illumination thrived
7th Century - Hibernian and Anglo Saxon traditions join in the British Isles to create Hibreno-Saxon style which was influenced by Celtic curvilinear form and patterns that was used in monasteries to make manuscripts (means "written by hand"
8th Century
768 CE Charlemagne - 1st Holy Roman Emperor (wanted a standard form of writing - causes creation of the Carolingian miniscule)
9th Century
804 CE Alcuin of York dies
814 CE Charlemagne dies
840 CE Moutier-Grandval Bible published. The Carolingian miniscule was an effective tool that got rid of ligatures and decorative flourishes. No more Scriptio Continua for better legibility
10th Century - Song Dynasty: Nie Chongyi (scholar of Confucius) commissioned to create "Sanli Tu" (Illustration to the Ritual Classics) which was based on the confucian text known as "San Li" (3 Rites). It explains proper behavior in court and ritual objects associated with that conduct. It brought new level of organization to the text by making cryptic messages clear and the illustration of objects were key to Chinese material culture
12th Century - Diamond Sutra found in cave
13th Century
1250 CE Textra lettering produced - a black letter script that gives that page a "textured" look
15th Century - English printing was pioneered by William Laxton. Books published before 1501 are called "incunabula" (latin for cradle). Over 4,00 incumbula were published before the end of the 15th century.
1415 CE Fraktur type developed by Johannes Schonsperger and it first appears in the Gebetbuch which was a prayer book for Kaiser Maximilian I (the term Fraktur is also used to generically refer to all blackletter scripts created after 1540 - Blackletter related to religion, culture, and government of Germany)
1420 CE Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer published using Textra/Bookhand
1455 CE Publication of the Gutenberg Bible
1457 CE After Gutenberg defaults on his business loan, Johann Fust and Peter Schoffer take over his press and publish Mainz Psalter which uses a letterpress technique - combines woodcuts with printed type
1470 CE Nicolas Jensen publishes De Praeparatione Evangelical by Eusebius in Venice and it one of the first books to be printed there in Roman type (Eusebius is considered one of the first historians of the church)
1480 - 1561 CE Claude Garamond was a French painter and publisher who created an adaptation of Bembo. He established the first type foundry. He promoted Roman type and was one of the first to use italics as partners to Roman letters.
1493 CE Anton Koberger prints the Nuremberg Chronicle - a history of the world starting with creation and ending in the current day (1493). It was divided into 6 ages plus a 7th age for a hypothetical future
Investors were Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermiester.1495 CE Manutius publishes De Anetana by Pietro Bembo (Bembo typeface was the basis for the old style type group)
Michael Wohlgemut and his son-in-law Wilhelm Pleydenwurff provided 1,804 woodcut images printed from 652 blocks
16th Century - Baroque Era begins (ends at the beginning of the 17th century). Roman type becomes strongly associated with French and Italian traditions while Blackletter form was associated with Germany. Roman and Blackletter type were often printed side-by-side at the end of the 16th century.
1500 CE Aldus Manutius publishes the 1st work in Roman Italic type
1501 CE Aldus Manutius and Francesco Griffo release a volume of poetry from Latin author Virgil (octavos = 8 leaf booklets - economic issues)
1517 CE Martin Luther writes "95 Theses on the Power and Efficiency of Indulgences"
1522 CE Schwabacher type used for the publication of Martin Luther's German Translation of the New Testament
stylistic principles of transitional typefaces: more vertical stress, greater contrast in stroke width, wider proportions, clean and elegant serifs1692 CE King Louis IV orders a new set of royal typefaces to be used by the Imprimerie Royale. It was cut by Grandjean de Fouchy and was called Romain du Roi "The King's Roman". It was the 1st typeface with a structured grid, typography was becoming a scientific pursuit of rational and logical processes. The use of these same processes continues to this day: the know-how of a manual worker, creativity of a fine artist, and logic of an engineer.
18th Century - The Enlightenment caused an obsession with compiling knowledge and attention to classification of subject. The pioneer of modern style was the Didot family and they used a point system for an international language for classifying type. Modern typefaces appear during the second half of the 18th century. In the late 18th century Giambatta Bodoni, who was influenced by Didot's work, introduces modern style to Italy.
stylistic principles of modern typefaces: greater contrast between thick and thin strokes, and hairline serifs, as well as horizontal, vertical, and circular elements1725 CE William Calson sets up a type foundry in England that continues to operate well into the 19th century.
He designed over 200 typefaces during his career and his typeface "Calson" (based off of contemporary Dutch models) was the root of most of these designs. It was more functional, legible (larger x-height, finer serif, more vertical stress) than the old-style typefaces. Calson was considered to encapsulate English national identity. In the United States, this type style was used for early copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.1713 CE Francois Didot establishes bookstore that will eventually become a press
1734 CE Calson issues broadside specimen detailing 37 typefaces which makes him the premier English typographer of the day
1737 CE Pierre Simon Fournier invents the first point system for measuring type
1766 CE Pierre Simon Fournier publishes a 2 volume book, Manual Typographique which was the 1st encyclopedic survey of typography
1751 CE John Baskerville, an English typographer, establishes a printing business in Birmingham.
He invented new ink, used woven paper, and hot pressed pages in order to produce the thin lines used in modern design1757 CE Baskerville produces his first book: A Volume of Virgil
1761 CE "Baskerville" typeface used to print The Works of Mr. William Congrove
1783 CE Firmin Didot refines the family's Roman face to create modern style, "Didot", which would become the most influential modern face because it set the standard for contrast, stress, and geometric style
1793 CE Johann Friedrich Unger creates a variation of Fraktur. Togher with Didot, he created a number of variations of this typeface, Unger-Fraktur
19th Century - The birth of Graphic Design
1813 CE Bodoni dies
1818 CE 5 years after Bodoni's death, Manuale Tipographico that included over 300 typefaces from across Europe as well as Asia
19th Century - Wang Yirong recognizes that ancient Chinese "dragon bones" that had been used in traditional Chinese medicine were actually very historically important which led to a renewed study of the oracle script that helped renew understanding of the origins of Chinese writing and the Shang dynasty
