Graphic design before graphic designers: the printer as designer and craftsman 1700-1914

Abstract

Although the term was not coined until the 1920s, graphic design existed long before there were any graphic designers. This lavish volume is a vibrant mix of beautifully crafted printed ephemera from the past. It is a visual journey through the pre-history of graphic design, charting the printer's progress from jobbing tradesman to the heights and hallowed status of artistic printer. Showcasing work from a host of anonymous talents whose names are lost to history as well as seminal, pioneering typographers, artists and printers such as Giambattista Bodoni, William Morris and Oscar Harpel, it reveals how those working on both sides of the Atlantic responded to everyday communication issues with original solutions and breathtaking flair and skill. The extraordinarily diverse results - the precursor of what we now call graphic design - are a celebratory cultural feast of the jobbing printer's contribution to visual culture and heritage.--Publisher information.

Contents

Introduction -- 1. Alternative functions of the black art. Letterpress printing and working conditions ; Training and aptitude ; The status of the early letterpress jobbing printer ; The sign-writer ; The jobbing engraver ; The engraved writing manual ; The engraved frontispiece and title page -- 2. Celebrating the challenge of change. Handicraft to mechanized industry ; Early nineteenth-century European typeface design ; Display typefaces : British typefoundries ; Popular reading : broadsides, chapbooks and almanacs ; Newspapers and early advertising ; Advertising and the growing influence of the USA ; Display typefaces : American wood type -- 3. Mechanization and international ambition. The influence of mechanization on the status of design ; Advertising and the advertising agency ; Packaging and the retail business ; Posters and the entertainment business ; Information design for transport systems ; Lithography and the advent of colour printing ; Mechanization and the failures of training ; Early photography and its influence on illustration ; The elevation of the jobbing printer -- 4. Artistic aspirations for mass communication. The apprentice and technical college ; The United States and artistic printing ; Artistic printing in Britain ; Photography and printing technology ; Colour printing and advertising -- 5. The rise of advertising and design. From Arts and Crafts to Art Nouveau ; Art, design and the cultural magazine ; The fall of artistic printing ; The mechanization of type composition ; The commercial artist and the poster - 6. Printing at the service of design. Craft, science and revival ; The independent designer ; Designers working with printers ; Establishing credibility for design ; Graphic design and the graphic designer ; Postscript.