History of Art: History of Design and Posters

Introduction: The origins of Typography and Graphic design

1.Cannes Gutenberg, Gutenberg Bible, Mainz, Germany, 1455. By permission of The British Library, London.

Many centuries before graphic design was established as a professional practice during the late nineteenth century, typography played a vital role in the culture of Europe. It was the development of movable type during the fifteenth century that allowed the widespread printing of works in the Latin alphabet during the time of the Renaissance in Europe. The name most commonly associated with the invention of mechanically assisted printing is that of Johann Gutenberg (1398-1468), an entrepreneurial-minded man from Mainz, Germany, who had trained as a goldsmith. Although Gutenberg did not himself invent the printing press, oil-based inks, or cast metal type, he seems to have been the first person in Europe successfully to combine these tools in order to publish books. This new technology allowed for the mass production of printed material on a heretofore unheard-of scale, and quickly replaced the agonizingly slow block printing and hand copying that were predominant at the time.

From Gutenberg to Bodoni

   In 1455, Gutenberg published his famous Bible, commonly known as the Gutenberg Bible (fig. 1). A huge two-volume work comprising 1,282 forty-two-line folio pages, it had been in production in his workshop for almost two years. Gutenberg probably printed fewer than 200 copies of the Bible, which, while printed on a modified wine press using movable type, were subsequently rubricated by hand, greatly increasing the amount of time needed to complete each volume. (Rubrication refers to the process whereby words and phrases are highlighted through different colored inks that either underline the text or are used to write the letters themselves.) In later years, the invention of two-color printing would accelerate the printing process because it completely eliminated the need for manual additions to a given book. Eventually, the use of italics and small capitals would replace the use of color as a way of showing emphasis.

Gutenberg's Bible was set in a typeset variant of gothic script called Textura, a word that refers to the dense web of spiky letterforms that fill the completed page, giving it a "textured" look. Textura was an example of "blackletter" type, meaning the letters strongly resembled the calligraphic writing of medieval scribes. The layout of the Bible is elegant and straightforward, with the text arranged in two columns that are symmetrically balanced. Both columns of text are justified left and right, although most copies feature letter illuminations that defy the boundaries that constrain the body text. Just as important as Gutenberg's synthesis of various printing technologies was his commitment to making mechanically printed books that aspired to the same high aesthetic standards as handwritten volumes. It was important that his Bible was beautiful, in order to compete with the richly decorated manuscripts that dominated the market at this time. Books such as those published by Gutenberg were rare, cherished objects and would have been far beyond the means of all but a tiny slice of European society. From the first, Gutenberg's aesthetic feat pushed book printing into becoming a field with a very high standard of typographic quality, a standard that was maintained in subsequent generations. The release of the Gutenberg Bible demonstrated the potential for printing, and over the next few decades the technology spread across most of Europe. By 1500, there were over 1,000 printers in Germany alone.

    When Gutenberg defaulted on his business loans in 1455, his workshop was seized by the businessman Johann Fust (?-1466). Fust, along with his assistant Peter Schoffer (1425-1503), published the lavish Mainz Psalter in 1457 (fig. 2). The Mainz Psalter represents an important development in that it combines printed rype with woodcut illustrations, a technique that would become the basis for centuries of letterpress printing. Woodcuts and metal type made to the same thickness could be printed together, facilitating a close aesthetic relationship between text and image. Books published before 1501, such as this one, are called incunabula, from the Latin word for "cradle." Because of the tremendous expansion of the printing industry in the late 1400s, over 40,000 incunabula were published before the close of the century.

    While Gutenberg and Fust had both published their works in blackletter, a competing style, roman letters, emerged in Venice in the 1460s in mechanical printing. The development of roman type is directly tied to the central role that printing played in the Renaissance. (The term "Renaissance" is used genetically to designate the period from roughly 1300 to 1600, when much of Europe enjoyed a significant economic expansion, but it refers specifically to the rebirth of interest in the Classical culture of ancient Greece and Rome.) Renaissance printing in Italy was influenced by scholars known as humanists, who concentrated their energies on the study of philosophy, literature, the arts, and languages. Italian humanists had adopted a type of handwriting called Carolingian Minuscule that was based on the style of writing used for official documents in the Carolingian empire during the ninth century. Partly derived from ancient Roman cursive, this handwritten script was adopted by Renaissance humanists because of its ties to antiquity. During the late fifteenth century, this style became known as Humanist Minuscule, and it is the basis for roman forms through to the present day. As the printing industry became more respected and commercially viable, there was even greater use of roman letters because it was no longer necessary for printed works to imitate the gothic script of handwritten works in order to be deemed valuable.

Printing was the core technological achievement that made possible the advent of an era of increased scholarship during the Renaissance. While in previous centuries it had taken years for scribes to produce a few hundred copies of a book, with mechanical presses tens of thousands of copies could be made in a matter of months. One of the finest early books printed in Venice using roman type was Eusebius's treatise De praeparatione evangelka.

2 Johann Fust and Peter Schoffer, Mainz Psalter, 1457. By permission of The British Library, London.

Eusebius was a fourth-century Christian theologian who is considered one of the first historians of the church. The treatise was published by a French expatriate, Nicolas Jenson (1420-1480). Jenson had learned the technique of printing in Mainz, where he lived prior to moving to Venice in 1467. Jenson proved to have an excellent eye for forms that were both highly legible and beautiful, and Jenson-Eusebius, with its light, open roman letters is much admired to this day (fig.3). The contrast in forms and the sloping stress are both derived from writing with a quill pen. Despite the handwritten roots of the typefaces, it is significant that typographers such as Jenson were essentially metalworkers, who designed letters as part of the process of engraving the metal punches—they did not draw their type by hand. This fact makes the smooth, flowing forms and good "color," or overall visual texture, of Jenson's roman that much more remarkable.

Around 1500, Aldus Manutius (1449-1515), a Venetian humanist and printer, published the first work in roman italic type. Based on cursive handwriting, italic was not used as a subset to create emphasis, as it mainly is today, but was its own style— one that proved valuable because more words could fit on each line than with either gothic or roman. In 1501, Manutius, in association with the punch cutter Francesco Griffo, released a volume of poetry by the ancient Latin author Virgil. Manutius's attention to economic issues also led him to become one of the first publishers of small printed books, called octavos because each sheet was folded so as to create eight leaves.

Manutius also produced a number of roman forms, and the one he used in his 1495 volume of De Aetna, by Pietro Bembo, proved highly influential (fig. 4). This essay tells of the Renaissance author's journey to Mount Etna, the volcano in Sicily that was sacred to the ancient Romans. The type designed for the book, called Bembo, was even more readable and harmonious than similar ones produced by Jenson. Its refined proportions allow the eye to flow smoothly across the page. While the individual letters are eminently legible, they are also quite stylish; the midbar of the "F," for example, is elongated for aesthetic purposes. Along with Jenson-Eusebius, Bembo is the basis for the group of roman types called "Old Style," which together are distinguished by their understated contrast, bracketed serifs, and oblique stress. Historic typefaces are traditionally grouped into three stylistic and chronological categories: Old Style, followed by Transitional, and then Modern.

Another important contribution to Renaissance typography was made by the French printer and publisher Claude Garamond (1480-1561). One of Garamond's key contributions was an adaptation of Manutius's Bembo that is perhaps more refined :han the original (fig. 6). With their broad forms and light proportions, Garamond's designs represented a startling change from the rather heavy contemporary French gothics. In absorbing Italian aesthetics, Garamond was following the path paved by his mentor. Geoffroy Tory, a humanist who had journeyed to the Italian peninsula and brought back an enthusiasm for the work of Jenson and Manutius. This was in concert with the strong overall trend in French art and culture during the later Renaissance to admire and absorb Classical forms that were being revived in Italy. While Garamond's roman faces have many Italian characteristics, overall they have somewhat more pronounced contrast and slimmer, mainly horizontal serifs. It is important to be aware that contemporary versions of historic typefaces such as Garamond are often not true to the originals.

It was Garamond's promotion of Old Style typefaces that resulted in the gradual disappearance of blackletter in French publishing, as roman faces came to the fore during the sixteenth century. In fact, from that time on, roman type became strongly associated with the French and Italian traditions, while Germany laid claim to the blackletter form. Garamond is also credited with establishing the first type foundry, as he would make copies of his faces and sell them to other printers. He was also the first typographer to use italic as a complement to roman type, and he designed the first italic face that was intended not to stand alone but to serve as a partner to roman letters.

At the time of the invention of mechanical printing, so-called gothic, or blackletter, scripts predominated in Europe. While the older styles called Textura, used by Gutenberg, and Rotunda— which had also been around since the Middle Ages—continued to be used, the new styles called Schwabacher and Fraktur would prove to be much more influential in future centuries. The reason for this longevity was related to their roots in Germany, through which Schwabacher and Fraktur came to be associated with that region's national identity. Schwabacher appeared in Germany as early as 1480, but its importance was greatly increased in 1522, when it was used for the publication of Martin Luther's (1483-1546) German translation of the New Testament (fig. 5). In rejecting the authority of the Pope and the Roman Church, Luther sparked the establishment of Protestantism, a process now referred to as the Reformation. However, Luther's choice of Schwabacher for his text also signaled a rejection of the roman type that prevailed in Italy, giving his seal of approval to the idea that blackletter styles were somehow quintessentially German in character.

Eight years before the publication of Luther's New Testament, in 1514, the printer Anton Schonsperger (?-1520) had developed the type called Fraktur (somewhat confusingly, the term "fraktur" is also used generically to refer to all blackletter scripts created after 1450). Based in Augsburg, Schonsperger relied on that city's long tradition of fine calligraphy in order to design his new type. As suggested by its name, Fraktur features broken curves and oblique strokes that retain the character of the calligrapher's brush that originally inspired the forms. Fraktur first appeared in 1514, when Schonsperger published the Gebetbuch, a kind of prayer book, for Kaiser Maximilian I. As would be the case with Luther's book, this event helped to reinforce the concept that blackletter was related to the religion, government, and culture of Germany. By the end of the sixteenth century, roman and blackletter type were both flourishing and were often printed side by side; however, the roots of their future opposition had already been established.


3 Nicholas Jenson, Evangelica Praeparatio from Veneta in Urbe, Jenson-Eusebius Typeface, 1470. By permission of The British Library, London.	4 Aldus Manutius, De Aetna. Bembo Typeface, 1495. By permission of The British Library, London.	5 Martin Luther, trans , New Testament, Schwabacher Typeface, 1522. Woodcuts of the Apocalypse by the Master (sometimes identified as Hans Cranach). By permission of The British Library, London.

6 Claude Garamond. Garamond Typeface, 1540,

"With their broad forms and light proportions, Garamond's designs represented a startling change from the rather heavy contemporary French gothics."

In the seventeenth century, at a time when the roman Old Style faces had become established across much of Europe, there was continuing typographic development, resulting in a new class of typefaces called "Transitional." Transitional type gradually arose during the Baroque era, a period that is roughly synonymous with the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. While the word "baroque" has stylistic connotations in the fine arts, where it refers to a break with Renaissance harmony in favor of greater expressiveness, in typography the term docs not really carry any stylistic meaning. In fact, baroque Transitional faces are very closely connected to the Renaissance aesthetic, emphasizing classical balance over any other attribute.

An important event in typography during the Baroque period was the increasing patronage of the French royal government. This development was part of a broader movement whereby the government under Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715) instituted a state policy through which the arts would be funded and controlled through official institutions. Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), a key adviser to the king, had earlier overseen the establishment of an Imprimerie Royale, or "royal printing works." In 1692, the king ordered that a new set of royal typefaces be created for the use of the Imprimerie Royale. After years of research and discussion by a government committee at the Academy of Sciences, Philippe Grandjean de Fouchy (1666-1714) was appointed to cut the new type. The resulting Romain du Roi, "roman of the king," would influence European typography for well over a century (fig. 7). The invention of the Romain du Roi represents probably the first time when a horizontal and vertical grid became the basic tool for structuring a typeface. The commission that designed the typeface used a 64-square grid, with each unit further split up into 36 smaller squares, so that the entire system totaled 2,304 tiny squares. This design process gave typography the imprimatur of a scientific pursuit, whereby letter forms are worked out not by intuitive but by rational, logical processes. In a sense, this episode established the final link in the definition of typography that exists unto the present—a field that requires a synthesis of many disparate skills: the practical know-how of the manual worker, the creativity of the fine artist, and the logic of a scientist. The Romain du Roi established the stylistic principles of the Transitional faces, including more vertical stress, greater contrast in stroke width, wider proportions, and thin, elegant serifs.

Another French typographer, Pierre Simon Fournier (1712-1768), made a major contribution to the field in 1737, when he invented the first noint system for measurinp rvne. Fournier's system, a part of the trend toward treating typography with the rational approach of the empirical scientist, used a scale based on inches, which were divisible into 72 points. Fournier also published the first encyclopedic survey of typography, the two-volume Manuel Typographique (1766; fig. 8). This work represented the first comprehensive overview of type ever published, and it included a discussion of type from across Europe, offering examples of different regional trends. This kind of attention to the classification of a given subject or phenomenon was quite characteristic of the philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment, which began in France in the eighteenth century. Enlightenment thinkers were consumed with the idea of compiling and analyzing human knowledge, and the first universal encyclopedia was published during this era. The scientific approach to typography, whereby it was treated as a field with consistent, mathematically based rules, suggests the application of Enlightenment philosophy to type.


7. Philippe Grandjean, Romain du Roi Typeface, 1702. St Bride Printing Library, London.	8. Pierre Simon Fournier, Manuel Typographique, vol. 1, Paris, 1766. St Bride Printing Library, London.

In 1725, William Caslon (1692-1766) set up a type foundry in London that would eventually turn into a family legacy, as future generations of the Caslon family continued to operate it well into the nineteenth century. Before Caslon, English printing, which had been pioneered by William Caslon (c. 1422-c. 1491) in the fifteenth century, had remained a somewhat haphazard affair, lacking a clear aesthetic direction. While Caslon designed over 200 typefaces during his career, the type known simply as Caslon, which was based on contemporary Dutch models, would always He at the root of his designs (fig. 9). Caslon would in fact become the most influential face ever produced in England. What made the original Caslon so popular was not any dramatic, stylish flair, but rather its solid functionality. The type is eminently legible, meaning that each character can easily be recognized, as well as readable; text set in Caslon seems to flow effortlessly past the reader's eyes. Caslon is a Transitional roman, in that it has more vertically oriented stress, greater contrast, and finer serifs than Old Style faces. In addition, Transitional faces such as Caslon appear overall more fluid than those of the Old Style. In 1734, Caslon issued a broadside specimen detailing thirty-seven typefaces that firmly established his reputation as the premier English typographer of the day.

     Caslon became more than just an official type like Grandjean's Romain du Roi; indeed, it became invested with the idea that it encapsulated English national identity. As a national type, Caslon was used in a wide variety of printed matter, from the most exalted government proclamation to the most ephemeral broadside. Caslon made its way across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States, where it was also used as an official type, notably on early printed copies of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The preeminence of Caslon, which is based more on its overall usefulness than its aesthetic qualities, prefigures the similar widespread use of Helvetica in the second half of the twentieth century.

    The other notable English typographer of the eighteenth century was John Baskerville (1706-1775). In 1750, Baskerville established a foundry in Birmingham and began promoting his eponymous type, which was first used in a volume of Virgil published in 1757 (fig. 10). In direct contrast to the stunning success of Caslon, Baskerville's designs were almost universally condemned for what was perceived as their stark, abstract qualities and extreme contrast in stroke widths. In addition, the delicate forms of the letters were criticized as too thin to be read easily. A desire to print his typeface accurately led Baskerville to a number of innovations in the printing process. First, Baskerville had to invent new inks in order to make the slender, delicate shapes of his letters stand out on the page. He also experimented with different paper types, finally settling on wove paper that had a smooth, glossy finish. Baskerville also used a technique called "hot pressing," whereby he would heat newly printed pages between copper plates, a process that smoothed the sheet while also setting the ink more effectively. It is hard for modern eyes jaded by an astonishing range of typeface designs to understand why Caslon could have been viewed as a supreme achievement in type design whereas Baskerville was condemned as an experimental, amateurish product. Today, only committed typographers would be likely to note the differences between these two romans, which share a number of similarities in terms of stress and basic letter shapes. While the lighter proportions of Baskerville in comparison with Caslon are quite evident, it is difficult to imagine an age when such apparent subtleties would be recognized and debated outside the profession itself. Furthermore, it may be difficult to conceive of an era when homely appeal won out over stylish experiment.

The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed the continuing evolution of typographic styles, in particular the creation of "Modern" typefaces. This term can prove confusing in the context of other usages of the word "modern," which is commonly associated in the history of art with developments in painting from around 1850. Modern typefaces tend toward even greater contrast between thin and thick strokes, so much so that the thin ones are often no more than hairlines. Serifs also are reduced to hairlines. The stress of a Modern face is decidedly vertical, as is the overall geometry of the individual letters, which are more abstract in appearance. The Modern style represents a decisive move through which metal type no longer resembles handwriting but consists of forms built on an armature of horizontal, vertical, and circular elements. In line with the Enlightenment's exaltation of science, it became more common for typographers around this time to use tools such as the compass and ruler in the development of typefaces.

One of the most successful firms in France that pioneered the Modern style was the Didot Foundry, which was originally established in 1713 by Francois Didot (1689-1757). The founder's son, Francois Ambroise Didot (1730-1804), was responsible for a number of typographic innovations, including the introduaion of smooth wove paper to France. As was the case with Baskerville in England, this achievement allowed for the accurate printing of the hairline strokes that became an important part of the Modern style. The younger Didot also invented a new system of type measurement based on Fournier's original one, but now using the French pied au roi, or foot, as the basis. This unit was divided into 12 inches, each consisting of 72 points. Didot also rationalized the system of names given to different type sizes, replacing the older, whimsical terms such as "parisienne" with the point system. This radical new system would quickly spread across the whole of Europe, thus creating an international language for classifying type.

    Francois Ambroise Didot's two sons, Pierre and Firmin, were mostly responsible for the final form of the eponymous Modern roman, Didot. Around 1783, Firmin Didot refined his family's roman face to help create the new Modern style. Didot would soon become the most influential Modern face, because it set the standard for contrast, stress, and geometric structure. It also introduced the Modern technique of regularizing the width of capitals, so that they do not disrupt the consistency of a line of text with too many disparate sizes. Along these lines, conventionally wide letters such as the "M" are condensed, while narrower ones such as a "T" are expanded, making for a bold block of text. Also, the Modern style eliminated ligatures between letters, such as the "ST," which had been common in the Old Style. Didot represents one of the first instances in which a typographer seemed to be aware of the virtues of white, negative space, as the extreme contrasts of the strokes brought this element to the fore.

Firmin Didot's type was brilliantly employed by his brother Pierre in the latter's acclaimed edition of the works of the foremost French dramatist of his age, Jean Racine (1639-1699). The title page of the first volume shown here (fig. 11) displays the great elegance of Didot, its bold contrasts grabbing the eye of the reader. The simple, strong geometric quality of Didot formed a strong parallel with the contemporary painting style called Neoclassicism. As the name suggests, Neoclassical painting revived the linear style of the Renaissance, but it also strove to simplify forms and compositions to reach an almost abstract ideal.

Similarly, Didot is a reductive typeface that does away with unnecessary flourishes in order to stress its clear and direct underlying structure.

    In 1793, Johann Friedrich linger (1753-1804), reacting to the increasing dominance of roman forms in Europe as well as to the great expense suffered by German printers who had to work in both blackletter and roman forms, sought to create a variant of Fraktur that would be more universal in appeal. The resulting type, Unger-Fraktur, represented an attempt to inject some of the geometric clarity of roman Moderns into the German type (fig. 12). Together with Didot, Unger produced a number of variants of his hybrid type, but was unsuccessful in promoting their adoption commercially. Already, the association of roman with the French-Italian tradition and of blackletter with the German tradition had become too deeply entrenched, and European typography would remain split until the mid-twentieth century.

In Italy, Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1830) of Parma introduced the Modern style in the late eighteenth century. Influenced by the work of the Didot foundry, Bodoni created a beautiful roman that further defined the Modern style. Bodoni's roman face adopted many of the innovations of Didot, but is arguably less adventurous, as some of the contrasts, for example, are not as radical as those found in the French typeface (fig.13). As was the case with the typefaces of Caslon and Baskerville, the less extreme example, Bodoni, would prove to be more popular than the startlingly original Didot. Five years after Bodoni's death in 1813, his Manuale Tipografico was published, which included a comprehensive discussion of over 300 typefaces from across Europe as well as Asia, and which would influence generations of future typographers. This publication in many ways served as a culmination of the classical period of typography, which had begun in the fifteenth century, as changes in society during the nineteenth century fundamentally altered the field. During this era, the element of connoisseurship that had heretofore played such a prominent role in the history of typography would be devalued in favor of the pursuit of commerce. The nineteenth century also witnessed the birth of graphic design.

9. William Caslon, Caslon Typeface, 1725.

"Caslon would in fact become the most influential face ever produced in England."

10. John Baskerville. Baskerville Roman (great primer), printed by John Baskerville,
Birmingham, England, 1772. St Bride Printing Library, London.

"... Baskerville had to invent new inks in order to make the slender, delicate shapes of his letters stand out on the page."

11. Firmin Didot, Oeuvres de Jean Racine,
Modern Roman Typeface, Nouvelle Edition, Paris, 1801.
By Permission of The British Library, London.

12. Johann F. Unger and F. Didot,
Unger-Fraktur Typeface, 1793.

13. Giambattista Bodoni, Bodoni Typeface, 1785.

"Bodoni, would prove to be more popular than the startlingly original Didot."

The Nineteenth Century, an Expanding Field

   During the nineteenth century, the continuing Industrial Revolution and the rise of cities stimulated a demand for mass media and advertising on an altogether new scale, while inventions such as the steam press greatly enhanced the possibilities for mass production of printed materials. The German inventors Friedrich Koenig (1774-1833) and Andreas Bauer (1783-1860) sold their new press to the Times newspaper of London in 1814. It could produce over 1,000 pages per hour. Koenig and Bauer's flat-bed press was later superseded by the American inventor Richard Hoe's (1812-1886) rotary steam press (1843), which could print literally millions of pages per week. Late in the century, the profession of graphic design was established when the aesthetic dimension of the mass media was separated from its production.

   It is possible to understand both the changes wrought in typographic practice and the formation of the graphic design profession only within the context of the Industrial Revolution that had begun in Europe in the eighteenth century and increased in impact throughout the nineteenth. The Industrial Revolution is the name given to the period when European economies shifted from a mainly rural, agricultural base, to one focused on the mass-production of goods in large factories. One direct result of the Industrial Revolution was the increasing concentration of the population in large cities and the consequent rise of mass culture, as merchants of all sorts of arts, sought to reach out to the millions of inhabitants of the modern metropolis. In this respect, while the Industrial Revolution is usually defined in terms of the components of industry such as the steam engine, the railroad, coal, iron, and steel, it is important not to overlook how the rise of inexpensive, mass reproduced printed materials contributed to life in the new urban setting. The steam-engine-driven press that was developed in 1814 furthered this phenomenon. The expansion of the printing industry was immense during the nineteenth century, as, for example, the British public witnessed the establishment of over 2,000 periodicals during this period. Some of these inexpensive publications were printed in runs of over 200,000. The situation was similar in other Western locales, especially France, Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the United States.

   Perhaps the most dramatic transformation in typography during the nineteenth century was the newfound proliferation of a wide variety of innovative typefaces. Responding to the demands of urban culture, printing workshops devised thousands of new typefaces for decorative and display purposes. These typefaces were deployed in a variety of printed media, with the printed broadsheet and its larger and more glamorous cousin the poster being the most ubiquitous.

   One class of type invented in the nineteenth century that has remained influential through to the present day is the sans serif. The first commercial sans serif was released in 1816 by William Caslon IV (1780-1869), who had taken over the operation of his family's historic type foundry in 1807 (fig. 15). Unlike the tremendous contrast visible in contemporary roman Modern faces such as Didot, sans serif type tended toward uniform strokes. However, the vertical stress and strong geometric structure of most sans serifs seem to copy some of the characteristics of Modern romans. This new kind of typeface found a home in advertising, where the letters worked very well in extremely large sizes. The effectiveness of sans serif type as a vehicle for bold statements is quite evident (fig. 14). The type shown here was carved in wood, an economical and flexible technique that arose during the nineteenth century to service the seemingly unquenchable thirst for exciting, inexpensive typefaces. In the 1820s, Darius Wells (1800-1875) had invented the lateral wood router, a machine that allowed for the mass production of wood type. The last decade of the century witnessed the introduction of the first professionally designed sans serif typefaces, such as Akzidenz Grotesk, released by the German foundry Berthold in 1896.

Another key typographical innovation of the nineteenth century was the slab serif, which, as the name suggests, denotes typefaces that feature heavy rectangular serifs (fig.16). In direct contrast to the sans serif, the slab serif face overemphasizes the serif rather than eliminating it. In some ways, however, the result is the same: slab serif faces appear weighty and grounded, with some of the same uniform strokes common in the sans serifs. The goal, as was the case with so many new typefaces during this era, was to grab the viewer's eye amid a busy urban milieu. Slab serif faces demand to be noticed in a way that was somewhat alien to classical romans; previous successful types such as Caslon had succeeded partly because they were almost invisible in the way they refused to stand out.

   In a curious quirk of fate, sans and slab serif faces became known as "Egyptians." There is nothing remotely Egyptian about them; rather, the name arose as a fashionable marketing device, because Europeans were fascinated with Egypt during the early nineteenth century as a result of Napoleon's imperial campaigns. In a period sometimes referred to as an era of "Egyptomania," a myriad products in addition to type sought to capitalize on the fashion for all things Egyptian.

14. Anonymous, Wood Typeface no. 22, c. 1890

15. William Caslon IV, Sans-Serif Type, 1816

16. William Thorowgood, Six-line Pica Egyptian (slab-serif) Typeface,
from New Specimen of Printing Types by William Thorowgood 1821. St Bride Printing Library, London.

Photography

Photography was an important technological development during the nineteenth century that would later prove crucial to the evolution of graphic design. The ability to make "drawings with light," which is the literal meaning of the word "photography," was discovered simultaneously in the 1830s by a Frenchman, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (1799-1851), and an Englishman, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800—1877). The "daguerreotype" shown here is generally considered to be the first successful photograph ever made, a view of an assortment of objects in Daguerre s studio (fig. 17). Over the next few decades, additional inventors made adjustments to the technology, including the ability to make positive prints on paper, establishing it as a practical way of recording images from life. One of early photography's most reliable markets was the portrait studio, which allowed middle-class people to have inexpensive images made of themselves. The resulting association of photography with low-quality commercial studios created a stigma that lasted for many decades, and it was only in the twentieth century that photography began to be taken seriously by artists and designers. By the late nineteenth century, technology had improved to the point where photography was a ubiquitous part of life in Europe and the United States. Advancements such as the creation of stop-action photography, as well as the introduction of inexpensive portable cameras, helped establish the medium as a useful component of everyday
life. Still, photographs were only rarely mass-produced in magazines and newspapers, mainly because the prevailing letterpress technology prevented the side-by-side reproduction of photo and type. For this reason, when photos were reproduced in the mass media it was through the process of wood engraving, because those images could be printed alongside traditional type. Owing to these printing difficulties, photography did not become an important element of graphic design until the 1920s, many decades after its initial invention.

17. Louis Daguerre, Still Life in Studio, 1837. Daguerreotype.

Fat faces, script faces, shaded faces, even three-dimensional ones: a wealth of decorative types made their first appearances during this exciting era (fig. 18). The burgeoning markets for the products of foundries in the 1800s vastly expanded as advertisers tried to keep up with the latest trends, while a number of historicist design styles also came to the fore. One glance at a type specimen sheet or poster makes it immediately clear how the field of typography experienced an increase in inventiveness and experimentation during this era. One issue that complicates the history of Victorian typography is the fact that the field became overrun not only with the work of knowledgeable professionals but also by a wave of amateur typographers. For this reason, many Victorian typefaces lack any sense of balance or harmony and were clearly the product of untrained printshop workers. This fact cut both ways: on the one hand, a great deal of Victorian type was poorly designed and featured more flash than substance; on the other, the influx of amateur designs enlivened the field with new energy that made nineteenth-century type more exciting than before. This same ambiguous situation has recurred in recent years with the advent of digital technology. Perhaps the most visible type of inexpensive, mass-printed material in the nineteenth century was the poster. Literally millions of copies of advertising posters were printed on the steam-driven presses of Europe. They were often displayed on every available surface along the streets and avenues of major cities such as London, New York, and Paris. In an attempt to give some semblance of order to this visually chaotic situation, many neighborhoods designated specific kiosks and what were called "hoardings," where posters could be legally hung by their distributors. Local governments often benefited from the immense number of posters that were pasted on to urban hoardings, as they collected a small tax on each and every image (fig. 19). Despite the creation of a number of sophisticated new printing technologies early in the century, most posters from the 1800s were printed with relief type, called letterpress, while the images were printed using inexpensive woodcuts.
   One of the most startling aspects of nineteenth-century typography and design—which is often called "Victorian," after the name of the British queen who dominated this era in Europe, reigning from 1837 until 1901 —is the manner in which a vast variety of apparently dissonant type styles would be employed together on the same page or poster. The poster illustrated here is a good example of mid-nineteenth-century work (fig. 20). The printer has not really attempted to use any clear compositional techniques, but has merely filled in all the available space with either image or text, employing an assortment of type sizes and weights in a manner that creates a chaotic overall effect, like the blaring of a sideshow tout. It seems at times that printers simply grabbed whatever type was at hand and, using eclecticism as the only design criterion, set about finishing the work as soon as possible.

   The name "Astley's" at the top of the left column is an excellent example of the "fat faces" that had been invented in the early nineteenth century and were often employed in letterpress posters. Bold fat face type is recognizable by the extreme contrast in width of the strokes, such the "S" or the "Y" in "Astley's." The sheer variety of lettering—roman, italic, silhouette, bold, three-dimensional, etc.—and the tremendous range in "x height," or scale, of the letters, is matched by the endless list of spectacles that make up the show being advertised. The nicely foreshortened woodcut of the Trojan Horse was probably a stock image that would be reused on successive occasions for a variety of subjects. Interestingly, no attempt is made to knit together the text and image, a design criterion that would subsequently become very important to early graphic artists. One other note on this particular image: it is, unfortunately for the purposes of comparison with later works, undoubtedly one of the finest examples of the work of printers from this era (which is why it has been preserved), and should not be taken as representative of the overall low quality that prevailed at the time.

   The Victorian age was one that witnessed the flourishing of a multitude of confusing styles. It was not at all uncommon to find a simple advertisement or magazine cover festooned with a Classical temple and allegorical figures, so that it looked like a page drawn from an illuminated manuscript. A cover from 1874, from Demorest's Illustrated Monthly, an American publication, is typical of the genre (fig. 21). A bizarre compendium of different type styles was printed so as to appear as if it is written on a magnificent shield, while allegorical figures grace both sides like those in a Renaissance religious painting. With a composition that can only be described as an example of horror vacui (a fear of emptiness), garlands and ribbons were used to fill any available space. Nothing about this illustration would naturally lead the viewer to recognize that they were looking at the cover of "the model parlor magazine of America."

It is worth noting that the standard view of Victorian typography—as a sort of dark age characterized by eclecticism, excess, and disorganization waiting for the enlightened reformers of the Arts and Crafts movement to rescue it—is something of a distortion. Plenty of posters, newspapers, and magazines from this era displayed a fundamental commitment to clarity and simplicity. For example, Punch, the satirical British periodical known for its irreverent political cartoons, demonstrated an admirable reserve in its pages. The layout of Punch, founded in 1841 by Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) and Ebenezer Landells (1808-1860), was actually rather staid. The design featured two columns of justified text separated by thin rules, making it anything other than over-decorative or eclectic (fig. 22). Usin