5
Inventing
Designers invented methods like carving, casting, and etching to quickly and widely distribute visual materials. Digital tools further expand how information is created and broadcast.
Graphic design is a practice rooted in creative problem-solving, often arising from visual communication challenges. Graphic designers repurpose, adapt, or conceive of new methods to meet their objectives, drawing inspiration from diverse disciplines. Historically, innovations like the printing press and typography revolutionized communication through mass production of standardized, legible materials. The ability to print images in color further transformed the field. With the advent of computers and the internet, barriers to expertise were removed, enabling trained and amateur designers alike to work in new ways.
Topics
- Origin and early evolution of printing in China
- Movable type is invented
- Movable type comes to Europe
- Innovating the printing press
- Mechanization of typesetting
- Printing images
- Lithography simplifies and expands printing
- Printing in color
- Victorian typeface designs
- Mavericks of composition and form
- Dada and Surrealism—making new truths
- Reimagining photography
- Russian avant-garde—inventing by combination
- Experimenting as practice
- A universally understood language
- Typographic invention in the Netherlands
- Graphic design expressionism
- Phototypography
- Calligraphic abstraction
- Figurative typography
- Experiments in graphic space
- Graphic design tactility
- Digital design revolution
- Spatial elasticity of layout, typography, and imagery
- The digital-type foundry
- Digital image manipulation and composition