visual communication history blog

Victoriana Postcards

2012-01-01T14:14:00.002+02:00

Artist: Kyd.
Publisher: Raphael Tuck and Sons.

More can be seen at cardcow, a commercial site which features a really great collection:
http://www.cardcow.com/

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Vintage Thanksgiving Greeting Card, c.1870

2011-11-24T19:49:00.003+02:00

From Centrasian's wonderful Flickr!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/centralasian/

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Hobo Glyphs

2011-10-12T18:55:00.009+03:00

With special thanks to my gifted graduate student Servet Ulaş who came across this extraordinary pictogram language, about which you can read more at these links:

http://desertphile.org/hobo/hobo.htm
http://preparedcitizenwsg.blogspot.com/2011/03/hobo-markings-language-of-survival.html
http://weburbanist.com/2010/06/03/hoboglyphs-secret-transient-symbols-modern-nomad-codes/

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A children's primer from 1731

2011-08-03T13:44:00.002+03:00

Fables and other short poems: collected from the most celebrated English authors: the whole curiously engrav’d for the practice & amusement of young gentlemen & ladies in the art of writing. This is the full title of a children’s primer by John Bickham which was published in 1731. The whole book can be viewed here at the Internet Archive.

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The calligraphic posters of Mohammad Jamshidi

2011-06-22T15:27:00.004+03:00

http://www.vitrinrooz.com/pages/archive.aspx?num=2&sah
http://www.adicaa.org/designers_detail.asp?id=16
Utterly stunning!

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The enigmatic canons of Juan del Vado

2011-05-30T23:06:00.004+03:00

A page from a musical score book of enigmatic canons by composer Juan del Vado (1626 - 1691), completed between 1677 and 1679 and given as a gift to Juan José de Austria, the brother of Charles II, for usage in his royal chapel.

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Denis Diderot: Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers

2011-05-27T22:09:00.005+03:00

Published over the course of more than twenty years (1751-1777), the 32 volumes of the Encyclopédie include 21 volumes of text with more than 70,000 articles on subjects ranging from asparagus to the zodiac. The remaining 11 volumes contain beautifully engraved plates illustrating many of the articles. The Encyclopédie was the major achievement of the French Enlightenment whose aim, in Diderot's words, was to "change the common way of thinking" through the expansion of knowledge and the development of critical modes of thought.

Read more, and also see all the engravings at:

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/

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Le sphere de monde: proprement dicte Cosmographie

2011-05-14T14:31:00.001+03:00

Oronce Fine's "Le sphere de monde: proprement dicte Cosmographie: manuscript", 1549. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/18260773

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African marionettes

2011-05-10T21:54:00.001+03:00

http://www.randafricanart.com/Bamana_marionettes.html

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Typografische monatsblätter, issue June-July 1968

2011-05-10T21:28:00.005+03:00

See a collection of spreads from the typographic journal, complied from various issues of the year 1968, on Sébastien Hayez's Flickr stream here >>>

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Carl Jung's Red Book

2011-05-08T16:39:00.003+03:00

When Carl Jung embarked on the extended self-exploration he called his 'confrontation with the unconscious', the heart of it was "The Red Book", a large, illuminated volume he created between 1914 and 1930. Here he developed his principal theories - of the archetypes, the collective unconscious and the process of individuation - that transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with treatment of the sick into a means for higher development of the personality. While Jung considered "The Red Book" to be his most important work, only a handful of people have ever seen it. Now, in a complete facsimile and translation, it is available to scholars and the general public, also through amazon.

An image showing 6 double pages from the book can also be seen as part of an article on Jung at the New York Times website here >>>

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Kris Kuksi

2011-05-01T18:33:00.004+03:00

http://kuksi.com/artworks/sculpture/

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Baroque Violin Pattern

2011-04-29T21:08:00.003+03:00

Violin pattern attributed to a Cremonese workshop, 17th century.
http://orgs.usd.edu/nmm/Violins/ViolinPattern/ViolinPattern.html

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de Motv Animalivm

2011-04-26T09:09:00.005+03:00

Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, 1608-1679
From the Iowa Universtiy Digital Library, John Martin Rare Book Room

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Amorum Emblemata

2011-04-23T16:09:00.007+03:00

124 Woodcut vignettes by Otto van Veen (1556-1629) showing cupids with bow, arrows & torch, inscribed with the motto "Amor vincit omnia". The emblem is in an oval on the right-hand page, with text facing it on the left-hand page.

http://www.archive.org/details/amorumfigurisaen00veen

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Vintage dressmaking patterns

2011-04-22T11:45:00.004+03:00

A huge collection of sewing patterns starting from the early 20th century. These can actually be purchased as patterns and used for dressmaking purposes today!
http://www.sovintagepatterns.com/vintagepatterns.html

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Die Neue Graphik

2011-04-21T12:39:00.004+03:00

Re-blogged from Designers Books

Markus Kutter & Karl Gerstner
Designed by Karl Gerstner

Arthur Niggli Ltd., Teufen, 1959
Blocks by Schwitter AG, Basle
Printed by R. Weber ag, Heiden
Bound by Max Grollimund, Basel
23 x 23 cm

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Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

2011-04-17T16:30:00.004+03:00

The Thoth Tarot was painted by Lady Frieda Harris according to instructions from Aleister Crowley. Crowley referred to this deck as The Book of Thoth, and also wrote a book of that title intended for use with the deck.

Crowley originally intended the Thoth deck to be a six-month project aimed at updating the traditional pictorial symbolism of the tarot. However, the project was to span five years, between 1938 and 1943, as its scope grew ever wider. Crowley and Harris were meticulous in their work, and Harris painted some of the cards as many as eight times. Early editions of the deck included two of Harris' early drafts of The Magus card, each making use of markedly different style and symbols.

The illustrations of the Thoth deck are rich in symbolism, based upon Crowley's desire to incorporate symbols from many disparate disciplines, including science and philosophy, as well as to draw on his extensive knowledge of various occult system (as described in detail in his Book of Thoth). For example, The Hanged Man and The Moon draw from Egyptian mythology, and the Princess of Disks holds a disk bearing the Taijitu. The pip cards in the four suits (Wands, Cups, Swords, and Disks) depict their objects in carefully crafted positions; for example, the Four of Swords (which Crowley named "truce") shows four swords with their points toward the center of an imaginary square, suggesting a possibly tense peace. The card illustrations are uniformly stark and vividly illustrated throughout.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoth_tarot_deck

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Zoomorphic Islamic Calligraphy

2011-04-16T14:16:00.003+03:00

The calligraphic art of Hassan Musa from Sudan, re-blogged from Biblio-Odyssey.

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The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Mythology

2011-04-14T23:16:00.005+03:00

Many thanks to HVC website reader Ms. Erin Jones, who sent me this brilliant resource:

http://www.datehookup.com/content-the-gods-and-goddesses-of-ancient-mythology.htm

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Historic Chinese Cats

2011-04-14T00:38:00.007+03:00

Shen Zou, Ming Dynasty, "Sketches from life"

Emperor Xuangdong, Ming Dynasty, "Cats below flowers"

Anonymous, Song Dynasty, "Cats playing"

Anonymous, Song Dynasty.

Many many thanks to the amazing blog Poemas del río Wang for having compiled a huge collection of Chinese cat paintings, both historic and contemporary, from where I found the ones above:

http://riowang.blogspot.com/2010/05/chinese-cats.html

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Ernst Haeckel: Kunstformen der Natur

2011-04-14T00:17:00.001+03:00

The full book can be viewed and downloaded as a pdf from here:
http://caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/haeckel/kunstformen/index.html

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Johann Bayer's "Uranometria"

2011-04-12T22:49:00.004+03:00

http://www.lindahall.org/services/digital/ebooks/bayer/

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Bioshock

2011-04-11T12:21:00.006+03:00

BioShock is a first-person shooter game developed by Irrational Games and designed by Ken Levine. Set in an alternate history 1960, the game places the player in the role of a plane crash survivor named Jack, who must explore the underwater city of Rapture, and survive attacks by the mutated beings and mechanical drones that populate it. The game incorporates elements found in role-playing and survival games, and is described by the developers and Levine as a "spiritual successor" to their previous titles in the System Shock series. The game received overwhelmingly positive reviews, which praised its "morality-based" storyline, immersive environment and Ayn Rand-inspired dystopian back-story.

BioShock has received praise for its artistic style and compelling storytelling. In their book, Digital Culture: Understanding New Media, Glen Creeber and Royston Martin perform a case study of BioShock as a critical analysis of video games as an artistic medium. They praised the game for its visuals, sound, and ability to engage the player into the story. They viewed BioShock as a sign of the "coming of age" of video games as an artistic medium.

In February 2011 the Smithsonian Institution announced it will be holding an exhibit dedicated to the art of video games. Several games were chosen initially and the public can vote for which games they feel deserve to be displayed via a poll on the exhibit's website . BioShock is considered a front runner to be displayed because of its status as a game that demonstrated how artistic the medium can be.

The following screenshots are linked from a thoughtful post on Bioshock, which can be read here >>>.

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Shakespeare, the typographer

2011-04-09T20:10:00.002+03:00

http://www.archive.org/details/shaksperetypogra00bladrich

Authored by William Blades (1824-1890) and printed by the Winthrop Press, New York in 1897; the full book can be found at archive.org, at the link above.

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Interior with a woman at her toilet (Anonymous, Chinese School, 19th Century)

2011-04-08T13:55:00.007+03:00

Yet another treasure from Centralasian's Flickr:

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African Masks

2011-04-07T21:49:00.006+03:00

Great site for African art: http://www.zyama.com/

I am only putting two masks here, however there is much more, including some beautiful sculptures. Of the two below, the top one belongs to the Bwa tribe and the bottom one to the Punu tribe.

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Paul Franck's Flourishes

2011-04-05T12:00:00.006+03:00

From a wonderful book entitled "Kunstrichtige Schreibart: allerhand Versalie[n] oder AnfangsBuchstabe[n] der teütschen, lateinischen und italianischen Schrifften aus unterschiedlichen Meistern der edlen Schreibkunst zusammen getragen" which was authored by Paul Franck, Paul Fürst and Christoph Gerhard in 1655.

The entire book can be viewed online or downloaded as a pdf from archive.org.

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Géricault - revisited by Mark Squires

2011-04-03T12:34:00.006+03:00

Géricault's "Raft of the Medusa" (above) as re-interpreted for a contemporary fashion magazine cover by Mark Squires (below).

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Patent Drawings

2011-04-02T14:03:00.009+03:00

The U. S. National Archives collection on Flickr is one of the greatest places to find visual communication history related material. 131 sets in total, and one of them is all about patent application drawings, mostly from the 19th Century - although there are a few contemporary prize gems (such as Michael Jackson's application for anti-gravity shoes) as well:

View the full set here >>>.

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Electrolux Cooker Hood - Family Lunch

2011-04-01T15:04:00.005+03:00

Found on Centralasian's wonderful Flickr stream. While this appears to be a contemporary illustration, it still has a great retro feel to it and so I am labeling it accordingly.

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Victorian shoe

2011-03-29T20:53:00.009+03:00

I found this here: http://hubpages.com/hub/vintage-victorian-flowers-and-fruit, to where I was directed to from here: http://wordplayblog.com/. Rather nice pages for Victoriana, so I am thinking that they will be good things to share.

I added the dark background, however you can find the original illustration here.

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Roberto Capucci

2011-03-27T11:37:00.001+02:00

Despite a sparkling career Roberto Capucci withdrew from the world of haute couture in 1980 to follow his own path, which seems to have included creating a foundation for the promotion of apparel-art as well as staging annual fashion-art shows in various locations around the world, in "any city that will welcome me" as he says...

Read more about Roberto Capucci here.

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Swiss poster collection

2011-03-27T01:47:00.001+02:00

The database maintained by the Swiss government is enormous, although I cannot say that it is altogether user friendly. Basically you have to know exactly what it is that you are looking for. Nonetheless, definitely well worth a visit.

Below are two posters linked from there: Armin Hoffmann (top), Ralph Schraivogel (bottom)

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The Rosetta Stone

2011-03-27T01:16:00.003+02:00

Soldiers in Napoleon's army discovered the Rosetta Stone in 1799 while digging the foundations of an addition to a fort near the town of el-Rashid (Rosetta). On Napoleon's defeat, the stone became the property of the British under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria (1801) along with other antiquities that the French had found. The Rosetta Stone has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1802, with only one break. Towards the end of the First World War, in 1917, when the Museum was concerned about heavy bombing in London, they moved it to safety along with other, portable, 'important' objects. The Rosetta Stone spent the next two years in a station on the Postal Tube Railway 50 feet below the ground at Holborn.

A valuable key to the decipherment of hieroglyphs, the inscription on the Rosetta Stone is a decree passed by a council of priests. It is one of a series that affirm the royal cult of the 13-year-old Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation. The decree is inscribed on the stone three times, in hieroglyphic (suitable for a priestly decree), demotic (the native script used for daily purposes), and Greek (the language of the administration). The importance of this to Egyptology is, of course, immense.

More on the stone can be read on the British Museum's page here >>>

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Audubon's "Birds of America"

2011-03-20T22:59:00.006+02:00

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Only two of the full collection found on wikimedia:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Birds_of_America

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easy peasy design...

2011-03-14T01:26:00.005+02:00

My apologies for having neglected this blog over the past few weeks. The reason is here:

http://easypeasydesign.blogspot.com/

For the past 2 years I have been teaching a web design class during the Spring semester. This is a course which a lot of non-design majors, particularly from our Faculty of Engineering, take together with our Visual Communication Design majors. In fact, usually the percentages go much in favor of non-designers. Last year I made small online tutorials for them, which are also linked to this blog somewhere. This year I decided to take things a bit further and started a full blown dedicated blog, where I am giving them tips, showing them resources, even some tutorials and such.

I am having a really great time with the new domain - which does not mean that I forgot all about this one. I will certainly come back to it. However, for now my blogging energies are focused there more than here and I hope that you will go and visit this new one also.

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Kahn + Selesnick's imaginings of future selves...

2011-02-28T19:16:00.008+02:00

http://synapticstimuli.com/exoplanetary/, via Reality Sandwich

Kahn + Selesnick's blog can be found here: http://kahnselesnick.tumblr.com/

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The Depero Museum

2011-02-25T14:19:00.006+02:00

The Depero Museum in Trento, Italy holds over 3000 objects which were gifted to the city by the Futurist artist/designer in 1957. Fortunato Depero's work (1892-1960) covers a broad range of art and design disciplines, ranging from stage/costume design, to furniture to graphic design. Designboom visited the museum and has put a substantial image collection on their excellent blog:

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/5247/fortunato-depero-museum.html

Images below show costume design for 1920s avant-garde theatre/performance (top); a display stand for Campari from 1926 (middle); and furniture design (bottom).

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Jan Meemelink: Botanical Prints

2011-02-25T13:25:00.002+02:00

Index for over 4.500 flower and fruit prints, each with an extensive description and illustration, arranged by plant family:

http://www.meemelink.com/prints%20pages/prints-index.html

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Container List

2011-02-25T13:20:00.003+02:00

A rich blog maintained by the Milton Glaser Design Study Center, featuring weekly graphics and ephemera from the design archives at the School of Visual Arts. Excellent resource including several important collections such as Steve Heller's. Not only Milton Glaser's output but the whole epoch, including the output of the likes of Seymour Chwast and Ivan Chermayeff is represented:
http://containerlist.glaserarchives.org/

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The Voynich Manuscript

2011-02-22T18:15:00.006+02:00

This is a handwritten book thought to have been authored in the early 15th century. It consists of 240 pages, most of them with illustrations. The author, script, and the language remain unknown and thus it has also been described as the world’s most mysterious manuscript.

Below are two pages showing botanical illustrations. The full book can be viewed here: http://voynichcentral.com/gallery/

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From 1887: "Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 1, Issue 1"

2011-02-17T18:49:00.003+02:00

Brilliant! A page by page archive of a typographic journal/resource published in 1887 in New Zealand, edited by a Mr. Robert Coupland Harding (1849–1916), is available at the New Zealand Electronic Text Center. All of the original and unabridged text in html format, and then each page has a huge sized jpeg image such as the one linked from below, so please be sure to click on the tiny thumbnails on the top left:

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Map Typography from the early 20th Century

2011-02-16T21:16:00.005+02:00

A selection of images from the blogpost entitled Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Typography published on the BibliOdyssey blog earlier this week in which title pages, headings and letterforms of maps issued between 1880 and 1920 by the Sanborn company are shown. The images below are from the Virginia map from October 1907 (top); the South Carolina map from June 1919 (middle); and the Washington DC map from1903 (bottom).

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Medieval Christian Book Bindings from the Walters Art Museum

2011-02-16T20:54:00.006+02:00

Beautiful online exhibitions from the collection of the Walter Art Museum in Baltimore can be found here: http://thewalters.org/

I found these Christian Medieval book bindings in their rare manuscripts collection. Below, from the top is the cover of a bible of which the artist is William de Brailes (English, active ca. 1230), and the binder is Léon Gruel (French, 1841-1923) (top); a gospel created by T'oros Roslin (Armenian, active 1256-1268) (middle); and the cover of the The Mondsee Gospels by Othlon of Regensburg (German, active ca. 1030-ca. 1050).

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Apothecary Pharaphernalia

2011-02-13T22:11:00.003+02:00

Not much need for a lot of words...

More of these can be seen on an auction page at Antique Helper.

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Non-Lorem Ipsum Text Generators

2011-02-11T22:53:00.008+02:00

Here are a few great little alternatives for dummy text which you may wish to check out - if (like me) you are tired of using boring old Lorem Ipsum all the time:
http://johno.jsmf.net/knowhow/ngrams/index.php

http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/text/
http://www.blindtextgenerator.com/lorem-ipsum
http://www.adhesiontext.com/
http://www.dummytextgenerator.com/
http://www.lorizzle.nl/

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Bembo...

2011-02-11T22:39:00.004+02:00

... is the name of the typeface which Francesco Griffo, working for the Aldine Press under Aldus Manutius, cut for Venetian scholar Cardinal Pietro Bembo in 1495.

One of the noteworthy things about Bembo is the fascination which contemporary graphic designers show for this 500+ year old typeface. Below are an anonymous poster based upon Bembo (top), "Bembo Type Work" by *Xantiel (middle), and "Font Poster" by creativespirit18 (bottom); all found on a forum thread of ultrabold.net.

And of course no post on the influences of Bembo on contemporary graphic design would ever be complete without a link to that utter delight Bembo's Zoo:

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U.S. Panoramic Maps

2011-02-11T21:48:00.009+02:00

The Panoramic Map was a popular cartographic form used to depict U.S. and Canadian cities and towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Known also as bird's-eye views, perspective maps, and aero views, panoramic maps are non-photographic representations of cities portrayed as if viewed from above at an oblique angle. Although not generally drawn to scale, they show street patterns, individual buildings, and major landscape features in perspective.

Below are three beauties from the website of the U.S. Historical Archive. The two above show St. Louis, Missouri from 1884 and 1848, while the one below shows Exeter, New Hampshire from the year 1896.

And then below is another really great one, depicting San Francisco in the year 1860, which I found on a very nice site called Historic Maps Restored.

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The Kelmscott Press

2011-02-07T16:56:00.005+02:00

William Morris established the Kelmscott Press at Hammersmith in January 1891. Between then and 1898, the press produced 53 books (totalling some 18,000 copies). Kelmscott was the culmination of Morris's life as a craftsman in many diverse fields. He set out to prove that the high standards of the past could be repeated - even surpassed - in the present. The books Morris produced were therefore medieval in design, modelled on the incunabula of the fifteenth century.

Below are the title-page & opening from Rossetti's "Ballads and Narrative Poems", published in 1893 (top); the end of the preface and opening of "The Nature of Gothic", published in 1892 (middle); and the opening from "The History of Godefrey of Boulogne", published in 1893 (bottom).

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ECM Music

2011-02-06T15:01:00.004+02:00

Founded by producer Manfred Eicher in 1969, ECM has issued over a thousand albums spanning many idioms, including standard-setting jazz recordings by Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, Jan Garbarek, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and others:

http://www.ecmrecords.com/Startseite/startseite.php

Importantly, for the field of graphic design Ecm has also pursued a consistent visual language based upon an interpretation of Swiss Style in its album covers. Very clean typography, often coupled with very beautiful , minimalistic photographs... Unfortunately the ECM site shows only small thumbnails. However a google image search will give you nice results, 4 of which I have linked to here:

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Tigre Milena's "Virtual" Victoriana

2011-02-05T01:42:00.007+02:00

Tigre Milena, aka. Doni Parlanti is a high powered professional in a field completely unrelated to Victorian fairy tales.

In her "other" life Tigre is an avatar in the virtual world of Second Life®, where she shows skills and talents which have nothing whatsoever to do with the demands of her "Real Life" job: Tigre sets up complex scenes (which are actually lived-in locations within her own virtual home), populated with the costumed avatars of her close friends as well as her own "alt" avatars. She then takes virtual photographs of these scenes and proceeds to re-create them as 19th century inspired illustrations, which she does in fact "dedicate to all the great Victorian illustrators of children's books". The outcome is simply stunning, as the images below will show. Small wonder, since before all else Tigre holds a degree in arts and crafts. Since Tigre does not have a dedicated domain for these beauties I am going to link all of the series to here:

"Bedtime Tales"

"Where's the cheese?"

"Charades" (inspired by the book Vanity Fair (1848) by William Makepeace Thackeray)

"A scrub in the tub"

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David Trautrimas

2011-02-04T13:40:00.006+02:00

http://www.trautrimas.ca/

David Trautrimas takes the components of familiar household appliances and transforms them into ironic/iconic architectural landscape paintings such as top secret Cold War era military outposts or residential building sites. The images below are "Micro Re-Instigator" from the The Spyfrost series (top), "The Fishing Complex" (middle) and the "Coffee Pot Towers" (bottom) from the Habitat series.

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The Visual Telling of Stories

2011-02-04T00:49:00.008+02:00

http://www.fulltable.com/CA/index.htm: Fabulous resource on mid 20th century living, told through all kinds of visual material, mostly advertisements and editorial design. Here is what Chris Mullen has to say about his own site:

"Welcome to Chris Mullen's website, The Visual Telling of Stories. You can go to the main gate or shuffle about in the Samplers till you get some hang of the place. It was started in 1996. Material is added every day. It is far bigger than you could ever imagine. I don't blame you for backing out, with a polite cough. I'll never know."

And this is no exaggeration at all - the place is huge! But nonetheless nicely manageable through a clear menu which is separated into well defined categories, which will take you to wonders such as these:

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Musical Ephemera

2011-02-03T12:32:00.009+02:00

Schubertiade Music deals in musical autographs, antiquarian music, music books, prints, photographs & paintings of musical interest, and rare musical ephemera. The collection covers a range from Dadaist concert posters designed by Tristan Tzara, to autographed score sheets by composers throughout the ages from Beethoven to Bing Crosby, to signed photographs of the likes of Fred Astaire and Josephine Baker.

Unfortunately the images provided are not of the greatest quality and their previews on the site are on the small side. (Note: the images are actually much larger, so make sure you right click on what you see in the pop up widow and "view" the actual image). This said, it is a great specialty collection which is well worth checking out.

The images below are the cover of the score sheet of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata from 1806 (top); a primer of braille music by Edward Jenkins from 1956 (middle); and the cover page of a 3 page stapled typed plan to "Lose Weight The 'Satchmo' Way" by Lucille Armstrong, compiled for Louis Armstrong, from 1970-71 (bottom).

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Fashion Art by Daniel Widrig

2011-02-03T12:30:00.004+02:00

Daniel Widrig studied architecture in Germany and the UK. After graduating from the Architectural Association in London with a Master’s Degree in Architecture and Urbanism in 2006 , he joined Zaha Hadid Architects where he worked on several major international projects. Since establishing his own studio in London, Widrig has been working on architectural concepts, products, objects and experimental furniture editions. His work has won several awards such as the FEIDAD Merit Award 2006, the Swiss Arts Award 2007. In 2008 Daniel Widrig won the Rome Prize. He is currently artist in residence at the German Academy, Villa Massimo in Rome.

Below are a few examples of Widrig's investigation into fashion art. The two images above are from the Escapism series (2010/11), shown at the Paris Fashion Week with Iris van Herpen and MGX. The image on the bottom is from the Crystallization series (2010) shown at the Amsterdam Fashion Week, again with Iris Van Herpen and .MGX.

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Embroidery Samplers

2011-02-02T14:48:00.009+02:00

A needlework sampler is a piece of embroidery produced as a demonstration or test of skill in needlework. Samplers often include the alphabet, figures, motifs, decorative borders and sometimes the name of the person who embroidered them and the date.

The oldest surviving samplers were constructed in the 15th and 16th centuries. As there were no pre-printed patterns available for needleworkers, a stitched model was needed. Whenever a needlewoman saw a new example of a stitching pattern, she would quickly sew a small sample of it onto a piece of cloth - her 'sampler'. The patterns were sewn randomly onto the fabric as a reference for future use, and the woman would collect extra stitches and patterns throughout her lifetime.

A sumptuous collection of samplers can be found on the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the under the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (a treasure trove, by the way!).

I am linking 3 of them to here: Rebekah White's sampler which is constructed out of silk on linen, ca. 1753 in Salem, Massachusetts (top); Mary Munro's sampler is also embroidered with silk onto linen, ca. 1785 at Miss Balch's School, Providence, Rhode Island (middle); and "The Tree of Life" sampler is from the first half of the 17th century, from England and is embroidered upon canvas with silk thread (bottom). (Please check out the page itself though, many more beauties to be seen).

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Visual Complexity

2011-02-02T12:12:00.007+02:00

Rigorously curated by its founder Manuel Lima, the Visual Complexity portal shows the very best output of a new hybrid profession between graphic design and computer science - Data Visualization:

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

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Abraham Ortelius: "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum"

2011-02-01T21:33:00.010+02:00

Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World) is considered to be the first true modern atlas. Written by Abraham Ortelius and printed in Antwerp (1570), it consisted of a collection of maps and text, all of it bound together to form a book. Many of his maps were based upon sources that no longer exist or are extremely rare. After the initial release of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Ortelius regularly revised and expanded the atlas until his death in 1598.

Although there are a lot of images scattered online, a comprehensive collection of the maps can be found on wikimedia commons:

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A stunning blog: BibliOdyssey

2011-02-01T20:43:00.011+02:00

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/

To read from its header this is a blog on "books, illustrations, history, science, Visual Materia Obscura and eclectic book art". And is it ever! I have been looking and looking since I found it.

The blog takes its visual feed from a huge Flickr stream, of many many sets full of good sized images, covering all cultures and historic periods, with an emphasis on what can probably be called "curio"s of print. All of this is maintained by a gentleman from Sydney, who goes by the short name of Paul K. A generous person since his material has a creative commons license attached to it, which only asks that you attribute back to him!

I am linking only one image to here. It is a matter of either one or of hundreds, you see! So, you really have to go and check this out for yourselves! This one image is one of the covers of a series books entitled "The Eight Dog Chronicles" by Kyokutei Bakin (1767-1848).

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Iranian/Persian Miniatures

2011-02-01T20:20:00.012+02:00

I cannot get over the hierarchical structure in Persian miniatures where (in the absence of perspective) this effect is achieved solely through visual separators such as boxes and rules; often intricately placed inside each other or in overlapping layers - creating complex but very easy to navigate informational systems. And especially the way in which text and image is brought together... Of course, the same principles apply to all Islamic miniatures, including the Turkish ones. But putting all national possessiveness aside, I know that Persian Miniatures are the very cream of the crop!

I want to share a couple of links where I have seen some really good ones:

The first place is the Shogun Gallery (which incidentally is also great for Japanese Art). They will let you see a really nice big sized image, which is of course great! The following image is from their Persian Hall of Genre collection:

Second link is actually the category page on wikimedia commons for the Brooklyn Museum Collection, which is absolutely outstanding, and that is where the following two images come from:

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The Periodic Table of Typefaces

2011-02-01T18:32:00.004+02:00

This is a great project developed by Cam Wilde at squidspot.com. You can purchase prints and other memorabilia, such as vinyl decals or even a moleskine notebook cover, at a page dedicated to the table.

Cam Wilde tells us that "the Periodic Table of Typefaces is obviously in the style of all the thousands of over-sized Periodic Table of Elements posters hanging in schools and homes around the world. This particular table lists 100 of the most popular, influential and notorious typefaces today", based upon the download/sales data of some very well known type foundries.

Here is the full table:

And a detail shot:

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Steampunk Typography

2011-02-01T16:00:00.014+02:00

One problem when writing a post on Steampunk is how to label it correctly: Does one use the label "19th Century" or "21st Century" or both? Again, would this genre go under "Victoriana" or "Computer"?

It seems to me that all of the above would have to apply: Although Steampunk, as an art and design movement is contemporary and is also often computer based through its wide usage in game design, the inspiration comes from the era of steam, the 19th Century. I will probably post more on Steampunk (which I find highly relevant/successful as an intrinsically postmodernist approach to design) in the future. For now, I want to stick to Steampunk typography:

Alex Beldechi's three dimensional, Steampunk referenced typographic work (top) should be seen in its entirety, at this link on Behance. John Coulthart's Steampunk typographic t-shirts (middle and lower middle) can be purchased at CafePress. And finally I have also found a whimsical typographical collage by Anthony Harmon (bottom), which he apparently was not altogether happy with but still kept uploaded at deviantart - thank God! :-)

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CCA Advertisements for Fortune Magazine

2011-02-01T13:21:00.007+02:00

Throughout the 1930's and 1940's the Container Corporation of America ran a series of mostly black and white advertisements in Fortune Magazine. Designed by the likes of Cassandre, Kepes and Herbert Bayer, these ads are nothing less than landmarks of modernist design.

Of the images below, the upper advert is either by Herbert Bayer or Kepes; in the upper middle we have one by Herbert Bayer; the lower middle is by Cassandre; and finally at the bottom we have a beauty which is anonymous due to an unclear signature. Please go to Rare Posters to view the collection which they carry.

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When Mucha sends you a postcard...

2011-02-01T12:56:00.002+02:00

I live in dread of the Cartamania site going out of existence one day since it has not been updated in over 2 years now. This is one of the greatest places that I have come across for things such as postcards from the 19th century, as well as all kinds of other wonderful paper based curiosities. So far, so good...

One of the nicest collections on Cartamania is a set of postcards designed by Alphonse Mucha. Below are two of them. To see many more, please go to the site and click on the link provided for them on the home page.

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A brainchild of Sumerian Bureaucracy

2011-02-01T12:36:00.002+02:00

That is what this well written article on Sumerian writing and seals calls these wonderful objects, engraved with a picture story and accompanying text written with cuneiform. Their function was to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally wet clay. Cylinder seals were invented around 3500 BC in Mesopotamia. They were used as administrative tools, as jewelery/magical amulets and also to notarize or attest to multiple impressions of clay documents.

One of the best image repositories for cylinder seals is on wikimedia commons and another very nice collection can be seen on the page of the Schoyen Collection.

The image below shows a number of cylinder seals from the collection of the Papiermuseum in Basel, Switzerland.

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Champs Fleury

2011-02-01T04:27:00.010+02:00

Geofroy Tory (1480-1533), was one of a number of typographic masters who, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries invented the capital letter as we know it today. Thus, Tory created a link between the Italian printers of the fifteenth century, who first revived the antique Roman letterforms, with the work of those who adapted those designs as typefaces for letterpress printing in subsequent centuries. He had a substantial influence on this entire process with his book Champs Fleury (1529) in which he asserts that divine perfection is to be found in the proportional affinities between letterforms and the human body and face.

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Margaret MacDonald

2011-02-01T03:50:00.009+02:00

Her husband, architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, by whose fame she was overshadowed throughout her career, said about her "Margaret has genius, I have only talent."

A biography of the artist (1865 - 1933) can be read here:
http://www.crmsociety.com/margaretmacdonald.aspx.
And a collection of her work, a lot of it unpublished in her own lifetime, can be seen at the Mackintosh online guide of the Hunterian Art Gallery.

The images below are a sketch for the "Vanity handkerchief" from circa 1898 (top); and two pages from "The Christmas Story" circa 1895-6 (middle and bottom).

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Antique Greece: Black Figure Pottery

2011-02-01T03:20:00.009+02:00

One of the best resources for finding out about these beauties is also the most obvious: Wikipedia. However the page on the Metropolitan Museum of Arts website is good also, as is the page at Stanford University. Again, wikimedia commons probably has the nicest collection of images, separated into historic categories.

Amongst the many reasons that these artifacts are very appealing to graphic designers is the usage of typography in them. While some of this text actually conveys meaning, working very much like speech bubbles do in contemporary comics; other text is used for purely decorative reasons - which is where the term "greeking" in graphic design actually stems from.

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The Bayeux Tapestry

2011-02-01T02:50:00.010+02:00

The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered strip of linen, telling the story of the events that led up to the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Although the 70 meter long (50 cm high) cloth is termed as a tapestry, from a technological viewpoint this is not strictly true since the Bayeux tapestry is not woven but embroidered.

Throughout the ages the cloth has remained an extraordinary example on how type and image can be integrated to become one fluid whole, and this using a highly unconventional format (more or less a ribbon?) at that.

The entire length of fabric, separated into 35 parts for ease of viewing can be seen at http://hastings1066.com/baythumb.shtml

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Alki1's collection of 20th Century Graphic Design

2011-01-31T23:33:00.005+02:00

This is one of the best image repositories for 20th century graphic design (especially the early stuff, such as Bauhaus) that I have ever come across:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/20745656@N00/tags/historygraphicdesign/

Alki1 (Maryellen McFadden), from Portland Oregon describes herself as a "Child of the Great Depression, member of the Greatest Generation, retired graphic designer, college faculty, vocational instructor, cooperative education placement person, lover of photography and Washington State Parks, eighty two years old."

And long may she prosper! Thank you Alki1, for this invaluable resource!

I am linking two images to show how absolutely brilliant this collection is: Above is a magazine cover which Alki1 thinks was designed by Herbert Bayer in 1929 (wow! - how often does one come across something like this?); and below is a Renå Binder and Max Eichheim poster for the International Press Exhibition Pressa, held in Cologne, Germany in 1928.

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Hiroshige

2011-01-31T23:05:00.008+02:00

Not only is Ando Hiroshige a hugely important artist in his own right, but he is also to be reckoned with in terms of the influence that he and his fellow Japanese woodblock printers exerted over late 19th Century Western art & design: Hiroshige combines ideograms and imagery in his prints, often through a usage of boxes and rules as hierarchical aids. And it is this mastery over typographic hierarchies combined with complex imagery that was so ingeniously adapted to Western typographic systems by the likes of Alphonse Mucha, creating the typographic style of Art Nouveau.

There are many resources showing Hiroshige's output online, but sometimes the most obvious place to look can also turn out to be the best one ;-). Although the images on wikipedia are much larger than what can be found there, nonetheless the richest image repository that I have come across has been put together in England and can be accessed from here:

http://www.hiroshige.org.uk/hiroshige/main/main.htm

I am linking the following images from the publication entitled "Famous Restaurants of the Eastern Capital" (1852/53), since these provide really good examples to Hiroshige's typographic mastery. Needless to say, this is only the very tip of the huge iceberg of what Hiroshige has to offer.

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In Aedibvs Aldi

2011-01-31T22:07:00.007+02:00

The Legacy of Aldus Manutius and his Press

What this site lacks in appearance it more than makes up for in content. A modest, bare bones html interface takes you through the life and times and the work of one of the greatest book designers and printers of all time. Very good textual descriptions as well as lots of plates showing the beautiful book pages created at the Aldine Press.

Images below are Constantine Lascaris' "Erotemata" from 1512 (also showing the famous Aldine logo of the dolphin and the anchor) (top); Theocritus' "Idylls" from 1495/96 (middle); Gregory of Nazianzus' "Carmina" from 1504 (lower middle); and the binding of the "Vulgate Bible" from 1592 (bottom).

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Neville Brody

2011-01-31T21:42:00.005+02:00

A really good collection of Neville Brody's output put together by Peter Gabor can be found here:

http://www.typogabor.com/neville-brody/

I am really happy to have found this, since decent sized online reproductions of Brody's work are not too easy to come across. In fact, I had a very hard time back when I was putting together the course website. So, this is really great! I am only linking one out of a huge collection of very well selected images - definitely check out the rest!

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Renaissance Dante in Print

2011-01-31T20:05:00.013+02:00

http://www.nd.edu/~italnet/dante/

This exhibition presents Renaissance editions of Dante's Divine Comedy from the Dante Collection at the University of Notre Dame, together with selected treasures from The Newberry Library.

The site combines solid information and anecdotes surrounding both Dante's huge oeuvre, as well as the many tales of the printing community centered in Italy and particularly in Venice during this period. Also gives an illustrated list of all the editions of Dante's work published during the Renaissance, including one by Aldus Manutius.

The images below are from Francesco Marcolini da Forli's edition printed in 1544 in Venice (top); and Giovanni Antonio Morando's 1554 edition, again printed in Venice.

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Panteek: Antique Prints

2011-01-31T19:43:00.001+02:00

A huge selection, everything from biological illustrations to fashion plates:
http://www.panteek.com/index.htm

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Kokka, A Gallery of Chinese and Japanese Painting

2011-01-31T19:04:00.005+02:00

This site is actually the introductory site to a book published in 1908 by the Kokka Publishing Company, who published a series of at least four art reproduction books of this type during the period of 1906-1908. This was the last and most expensive book and it was priced at triple the price of the other books.

Images below are: "Plum Tree", by Korin Ogata (top); "A Mountain After the Rain", attributed to Kao Jan-hui (middle); "Fish in Nature", attributed to Fan Anjen (bottom).

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My student's blogs :-)

2011-01-31T18:02:00.009+02:00

This year the main course requirement of my HVC course was keeping a blog to which at least one new post was to be added every week.

I have to say that the strategy seems to have paid off: The final exam grades were considerably higher than they were in previous years. (I give a pretty tough exam where students are asked to identify 40 or so thumbnail images, and they are only allowed to give a maximum of 3 keywords for each).

The good exam results are no wonder, since quite a few of their blogs carry remarkable content, which would have to mean that they really did become involved with the subject - as only they should, of course. After all, how can one ever hope to become a good designer without knowing the history of one's endeavor?

So, without further ado, here they all are:

http://va312su.wordpress.com/.
:-)

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Black Mesa: Game modification at its very best

2011-01-31T14:50:00.008+02:00

While the input of many fields and huge teamwork is required to create a good game, visual communication design plays a big part in this work as well. Point in case, Black Mesa is a stunning example of visuality in game design: This is a conversion based upon the award-winning first person shooter game Half-Life from the late 1990's. The website, which also holds a wiki and provides many many screenshots, gives a very good overview of the whole process of designing/creating a game.

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Web Design History

2011-01-31T14:17:00.002+02:00

http://www.innervisions.com.au/webhistory/index.html

This is a very good overview of the various phases which web design went through over the past two decades. Please note that this is a purely textual account, providing plenty of links to other domains in which the subject is also discussed.

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symbols.com

2011-01-31T14:00:00.003+02:00

http://www.symbols.com/. Online version of the famous Symbols book by Carl Liungman. This may work even better than a book, since it lets you conduct a search based upon either graphic parameters or words, which lead you to excellent descriptions of the symbol, its usage, its context, etc.

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The Minerva Britanna Project

2011-01-30T17:18:00.005+02:00

Henry Peacham's Minerva Britanna was compiled by the students of the Middlebury College first-year seminar, Emblem Literature, in the Fall of 2001:

http://f01.middlebury.edu/FS010A/STUDENTS/contents.htm

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Printing in England from William Caxton to Christopher Barker

2011-01-30T17:12:00.005+02:00

The page of an exhibition held in England in 1977! Gives lots of information on the era. Some nice images also, but mostly text:

http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/printing/index.html

The images below are William Gilbert's "De magnete", printed in London by Petrus Short in 1600 (top), Galen's and "De temperamentis, et de inaequalia intemperie" from 1521 (middle), and James Pilkington's "A godlie exposition upon certaine chapters of Nehemiah", printed in Cambridge by Thomas Thomas in 1585 (bottom).

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The Linda Hall Library of Scientific Visualization

2011-01-29T20:35:00.008+02:00

A magnificent portal housing a number of online exhibits, all revolving around Scientific visualization, covering a range of topics from Astronomy to voyages of discovery to a celebration of Darwin's theories of evolution. Not to be missed!

http://www.lhl.lib.mo.us/events_exhib/exhibit/index.shtml

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The Wenceslaus Hollar Digital Collection

2011-01-29T20:25:00.006+02:00

Huge archive of etchings of the artist, covers a huge range from costumes to architecture to maps and title pages. The image quality of quite a few of the reproductions is not the greatest, unfortunately.

http://link.library.utoronto.ca/hollar/

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Ellen Lupton: Thinking with Type

2011-01-29T20:20:00.006+02:00

http://www.papress.com/thinkingwithtype/index.htm

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John Maeda interviews Paul Rand

2011-01-29T20:17:00.002+02:00

http://acg.media.mit.edu/events/rand/ideamag.html. The title of this post is more than self-explanatory methinks...
;-)

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The Bioephemera Blog

2011-01-29T20:06:00.012+02:00

Arguably, the Bioephemera blog may have nothing to do with the history of visual communication design. I beg to differ: Unless we think of visual communication as a process solely founded in typography (which I most certainly do not! ;-), then the contents of this extraordinary blog which brings together the output of two fields - art & design and biology - is more than relevant. Point in case:

The Octopus Chair by Maximo Riera.

"the Octopus Chair places the animal and human being in harmony, where each is considered equal and one is not subject to the other. The octopus is not decoration; it is as intrinsic to the chair as the person sat upon it."

Read more on the Octopus throne here.

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Paper, Leather, Clay & Stone

2011-01-29T17:52:00.007+02:00

This is a really great online exhibition, put together by Cornell University, which takes you through the history of writing based upon the materials that were used for such a purpose. The index page is built as a very simple to navigate table which takes you to all of the illustrated sub-sections which also provide short but excellent explanatory texts.

Cuneiform tablets. Produced in the city-states of Ur, Erech, and Babylon. Late third and early second millenia bce.

"The Book of the Dead". Egypt, ca. 332-30 BCE.

"The Jade book". Ch'ing Shêng-tsu, Emperor of China. Reigned 1662-1722.

Denis Diderot. 1713-1784. "Encyclopédie, ou, Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers". Paris: Braisson and others, 1751-1780.

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The Prelinger Archive

2011-01-29T17:33:00.005+02:00

The famous Prelinger archive is a collection of over 2000 vintage videos which are opensourced, so they can be used for teaching purposes, also in studio art classes:
http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger

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Paula Scher gets serious

2011-01-29T16:59:00.007+02:00

A great video on the TED website by Paula Scher from Pentagram about solemn and serious design.

"Paula Scher looks back at a life in design (she's done album covers, books, the Citibank logo ...) and pinpoints the moment when she started really having fun. Look for gorgeous designs and images from her legendary career."

Again, the video is here.

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Great-great-great-granddaddy's typewriter

2011-01-29T16:57:00.002+02:00

reblogged from here.

Great blog altogether by the way: http://www.designersfood.com/

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Vintage ads, and all sorts of other modernist ephemera...

2011-01-29T04:25:00.016+02:00

... is brought to us by clotho98: A truly great repository of in-your-face modernist advertising design. I absolutely love it! clotho's interests also cover Victoriana and Art Deco. She has separated her collection into various categories and I will definitely be tackling some of the others later. For now, get a load of this lot:

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Mehmed Siyah Qalem

2011-01-29T04:10:00.010+02:00

China, chinoiserie and Painting in Turkestan under the Timurids, ca. 1400: http://www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/~history/turkis.html

I love the miniatures of Mehmed Siyah Qalem, or Mehmed of the Black Pen. Although Mehmed Siyah Qalem was a Turk from Central Asia his work is very strongly inspired by Chinese art, which was imported into Turkestan by the Mongol invasions at the times, as well as by the strong trade links between Eastern and Western Asia.

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On-line catalogue of digitized books of the Archbishop chateau in Kroměříž

2011-01-29T03:36:00.016+02:00

This is a comprehensive collection of books, mostly on Botanics, dating from the late Medieval period to the 18th century with some really stunning illustrations: http://digi.azz.cz/main.php?lng=2

Icones Plantarum Rariorum (1), by Nicolaus Joseph Jacquin (1727-1817).

Prodromos theatri botanici, by Casper Bauhin(1560–1624).

Le Jardinier Hollandois.../ Der Niederländische Gärtner...., by Jan van der Groen (ca 1635 - 1672).

This website also allows you to switch views between text only and image only folios, which does of course, make life a lot easier when you are doing a search.

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University of Toronto: Anatomia Collection

2011-01-29T03:24:00.015+02:00

Very nice collection of Anatomical Illustrations, can be accessed from here:
http://link.library.utoronto.ca/anatomia/application/index.cfm.

The two plates below are from "Traité complet de l'anatomie de l'homme" by Marc Jean Bourgery (1797-1849). The book was published in Paris in 1831-1854. However, this is by no means the only book to be found here: The collection is huge, with ninety-five individual titles represented, ranging in date from 1522 to 1867, one more beautiful than the other.

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Dada Periodicals

2011-01-29T02:52:00.009+02:00

A brilliant collection of Dada periodicals: http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/collection.html

cover for 391, by Francis Picabia.

3 Above: Merz pages by Kurt Schwitters, the central image is a centerfold from issue 8/9, which was actually designed by El Lissitzky.

Also on this site are lot of page reproductions of poetry books by Dadaist poets ranging from Eluard to Tristan Tzara; as well as pages from an exhibition catalog of Max Ernst's work (below).

Incunabula Collection

2011-01-29T02:26:00.010+02:00

http://www.ndl.go.jp/incunabula/e/index.html

Probably the best collection of Icunabula to be found online - at least that I am aware of. Not only many superb quality images but also very good explanatory text. The collection mostly concentrates on full text pages (with relatively few images); which I find particularly fascinating since there are so many similarities that one can pinpoint between contemporary, typographically based page layouts and these stunning samples of book design.

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Litterae Antiquae

2011-01-29T02:14:00.006+02:00

A Flickr group, the description of which reads: "Officially, the phrase "littera antiqua", or "the ancient letter", was used by the humanists in the 15th century to describe a style of calligraphy or lettering found on the manuscripts which they wrongly believed had been written by the Romans. I've taken some liberties, with the phrase, but hope the spirit of the idea will remain.

This group will be dedicated to letters, carved and otherwise, from our travels around the world from the days before signs and wayfinding were populated by neon and lights."

What has come about is a really great collection of images covering antique typographic material from carved inscriptions to rare books.

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The Rare Book Room

2011-01-29T00:53:00.008+02:00

A fabulous collection of rare books. The site seems to have utilized the high quality digitized facsimiles of rare and precious books, originally undertaken by the Octavo Press. Sadly, Octavo's books are no longer visible online, and the Rare Book Room also only allows you to view a book but not to download it or to link the images themselves.

These restrictions duly noted, this site is still most definitely worth a visit! Books found here include Albert Duerer's "De Symmetria" and "Underweysung der Messung" from 1538; Bodoni's "Manuale Tipografico" from 1818, Geofroy Tory's "Champ Fleury" from 1529; and Jean Midolle's "Album du Moyen Age" from 1837. And many many more...

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