January 27, 2010 Victorian to Modernism

Key points

• Victorian period was from 1837– 1901
• The Victorian period focused on highly decorative and gothic forms.
• The beauty of the art in the Victorian period covered the reality of suffrage and child labor.
• The forerunner of modern printing was chromolithography, which made illustration dominant.
• Santa Claus was created in America during this period. (Louis Prang)
• Monotype gained popularity
• Thomas Nest was the father of political cartooning.
• Wood engravements led way to comic books.
• Modern movements, such as the arts and crafts movement, emerged.
• Morris was one of the first socialists, and developed the typefaces Golden, Troy, and Chaucer.
• Art Nouveau was “Art for Art’s sake”.
  
• The Japanese Ukiyo-e designs gained popularity along with Renaissance designs.
• The simplistic forms of Ukiyo-e and the development of photography gave way to modernism.
• Julies Cheret (French): Father of modern lithographic poster.
• Eugene Grasset (French): ‘coloring book’ style, influenced by Ukiyo-e.
• Alphonse Mucha (Czech): Created poster for Sarah Bernhart which was the first movie poster with focus on actors.
• Moulin Rouge posters predated cubism.
• low art = commercial art. Consumer oriented.
• America: Started putting letters in letters.
• Modernism decided to “eliminate all clutter”.
• Germany: Jugendstil
• Austria: Sezessionstil
• Poster for the first Secessionist Exhibition, 1898, was the start of art censorship. Lots of whitespace.
• Bauhaus: form follows design
• Harry Beck developed the first London underground map based on functionality and simpleness, rather than geographic correctness.

Today’s lecture running from the Victorian period to Modernist period is of use to my career as a graphic designer because it is important to see where the still in-tact ideals of “keep it simple, stupid (KISS)” developed, and how they developed. It helps one understand history and is important for determining the age and era of a design, or mimicking it. It also resolves questions regarding the typefaces created in this time, and why they were the way they were. Last but not least, it tells us how the disciplines of graphic design and illustration both gained weight, were at once identical, and how they broke apart, therefore provides a simple explanation when asked “how does graphic design and illustration differ?”.

Class Session, January 20, 2010 --A Quick Tour from 200,000 BC to 19th Century!

Interesting Key Points:

• Before type, there were simplified pictures. (Lascaux and Wall paintings)
• Out of Pictures came symbols.
• Sumarians were the first to have a sort of written language that wasn't illustration (Cuneiform).
• Egyptians copied Sumarians, developed hieroglyphs.
• Phoenician alphabet caused rise of Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin alphabets. 
• Rules of spacing came from Greece. Greek created Unicials.
• Romans took Greek alphabet,  also made square capitals and rustic capitals, and first attempt at something like a miniscule.
• Christians and the Codex
• Ireland continued to develop because it's an island. Celtics merged Christian texts with pagan decorations.
• Principle of Diminuendo
• First international style: Blackletter.
• Chinese made the first moveable type because they had too many characters.
• Chinese made 'chops', a type of stamp to reveal the owner.
• Gutenberg used Textura to disguise the Bible as done by scribes.
• Educational books developed. Gutenberg made lots of money.
• German style: Textura + illustration
• French liked lighter letters
• English moved the responsibility of typography to engineers, not calligraphers.
• Type grid had 2,305 units in cells for capital letters.
• They made a type manual.
• Roman Du Roi, 1701.
• Industrial Revolution led to modern styles, which broke with the classical. 
• Novelty was the most important for serif fonts after grotesque developed. 19th century.
• Grotesque and Sans-serif is the same thing.

This session was interesting for me because for one, it helped refresh my memory on some details I learned in Art History last year. I learned a lot about the development of the type, and find it quite interesting how pictures became letterforms. For two, knowing when and where the typefaces or glyphs were made helps me better reconstruct the typographic ‘feel’ associated with a certain time periods and places. This is a very important thing to know if one wants to be successful as a graphic designer. I am definitely going to look up the Roman Du Roi, and some of the other documents discussed today, as this session has peeked my curiosity and I want to look at them now. Perhaps I can learn even more?

History of Graphic Design-- First Session

Ringling College of Art and Design, Spring 2010. This course requires us to keep a blog regarding the things we learn in class. There will be weekly updates every Wednesday towards the end of the History of Graphic Design class which starts at 7 PM. It is taught by Prof. Higgins.