VISUAL COMMUNICATION HISTORY BLOG

The opening of Japan in the 19th century after its isolationist Edo period caused an influx of foreign influence, including Western approaches to medicine. Woodblock prints from this era, often in the vibrant ukiyo-e style, captured this transition, with kabuki actors representing internal processes, and Buddhist deities battling cholera and measles. The University of California, San Francisco, has a particularly rich collection of over 400 o…

Mucha was a regular artist for Lefèvre-Utile, the major French biscuit company founded in Nantes in 1846. He designed publicity posters and calendars for them and in 1896 was the first artist to utilise the company’s initials ‘LU’ as a decorative motif with his design for the advertising calendar for 1897. Around 1900 Mucha’s task was expanded to packaging design, which included labels, box tops and the decoration of biscuit tins. For Mucha,…

If you are a graphic designer who is suddenly confronted with having to design a retro logo or a label that asks for a no hold barred approach, needs every pattern, texture, flourish, all the typographic twists and turns and curlicues - and all correctly placed, no less - you may be quite intimidated by the task at hand. I know, I certainly would be. Kittl is a truly astonishing online app that lets you create these complex types of logos. You st…

These are things that I collected over some time. So, unfortunately there is no resource link that goes with this post, except to direct you to pinterest > > > where you will find lots and lots of images which will however mostly link you back to places where they are selling them.

Published by Schalekamp, van de Grampel en Bakker, Amsterdam. Found on the Memory here > > >

From the Biodiversity Library https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/albums/72157632056573873

From the David Ramsey Map Collection. See original posting here >>>

Human body with anatomical terms. The writing is in a good professional hand. From a Persian manuscript with a seal bearing the words: Murajiah va taftish shud. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_body_with_anatomical_terms,_Persian,_1893_Wellcome_L0012605.jpg

Seen here:  http://vintageephemera.blogspot.com/2010/10/advertisement-page-from-scientific-news.html

Just a whimsy of mine today. Victorian trade cards and advertisements featuring cats that I found online. ;-)

This is a star atlas by British author Alexander Jamieson, published in 1822. The atlas includes 30 plates, 26 of which are constellation maps with a sinusoidal projection. Some of the plates are hand-colored. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Celestial_Atlas

From a manuscript dated 1893 with a seal which bears the words: Murajiah va taftish shud. Found on the Wellcome digital library: https://wellcomecollection.org/works

One of a set of 12 hand-tinted astronomical prints with an explanatory card. The publisher is identified on each print as J. Reynolds or James Reynolds of the Strand, London. These cards were first issued by Reynolds in 1846, although he and other publishers continued to produce them throughout the second half of the 19th century. https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/263841.html

Two anonymous beauties from the late 18th to the early 19th centuries. Read more about them here: https://blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2015/12/a-malay-manuscript-artist-unveiled-datuk-muda-muhammad-of-perlis.html

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

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 c…

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/

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

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 >>> .

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).