VISUAL COMMUNICATION HISTORY BLOG

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 inspir…

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…

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 mor…

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 impressi…

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 o…

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 …

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…