History of Graphic Design - Test 1 review

Cuneiform

"Wedge-shaped" writing made by depressing a stylus into soft clay tablets. The triangular-tipped stylus pushed into clay made writing much faster.

Romanesque period manuscript design

(A.D. 1000-1150). Saw the cross-fertilization of manuscript design elements because of increased travel from the crusades and pilgrimages.

Hittite cylinder seals

(c 500 b.c.), a precursor to printing, provided a forgery-proof method for sealing documents and proving their authenticity. They were carried on cord on the wrist like a bracelet.

Capitalis Monumentalis

(monumental capitals) The beautiful square capitals inscribed in Roman monuments.

Capitalis Rustica

(rustic capitals). Rounded letterforms were faster to write, and occupied less space. Was used to conserve expensive parchment materials and writers could include half again as many characters in the same space as Capitalis Quadrata. Used for personal communication, accounting, quick messages, and less formal communications.

Capitalis Quadrata

(square capitals). Written slowly and carefully with a flat pen, square capitals had a stately, regular proportion and clear legibility. No space was left between words. It was a more formal style used for proclamations, edicts, and "official" state manuscripts.

Codex

A book-like format invented around the time of Christ that eventually replaced the scroll. Codex were more transportable and easier to protect. The writing surface of a scroll was one side only, a codex page could be written on both sides, which greatly increased the economy of writing (parchment was expensive.)

Venice and Renaissance graphic design

A center of commerce and trade, Venice was the epicenter of renaissance graphic design.

Movable type

A concept of movable type was developed 1045 A.D. By 1313 chinese printers were using a revolving typecase tables to keep the 40,000 characters sorted and organized. Paper spread slowly westward along trade routes over the course of a thousand years, arriving eventually in Europe during the Renaissance.

Erhard Ratdolt's Calendarium

A lessening of fear and superstition led to the production of this scientific book. Sixty diagrams were used to scientifically explain solar and lunar eclipses. First example of tipped-in artwork in a book.

Geoffroy Tory

A renaissance man. Tory translated, edited, and published Latin and Greek texts; introduced the apostrophe, accent, and cedilla to the French language; wrote books on the proportions of roman letters (Champ Fleury). Known as the most influential French graphic designer of his century.

Chops

A seal used as a 'signature' by the user. Classically, chops were a red shape with white letters. Considered one of the first forms of relief printing.

Broadsheet

A single sheet of paper printed on both sides. The terms broadside and broadsheet are often (incorrectly) used interchangeably.

Broadside

A single sheet of paper printed on one side.

Watermark

A translucent emblem produced by pressure from a raised design on the papermaking mold, and visible when the sheet of paper is held to the light, was used in Italy by 1282. Watermarks featured trademarks of paper mills, individual craftsmen, and even perhaps religious symbolism. They eventually served additionally as a designation for sheet and mold sizes and paper grade. Mermaids, unicorns, animals, flowers, and heraldic shields were frequent design motifs.

Ars moriendi

A type of wood block book that offered advice on how to prepare for death. Often used as religious propaganda.

Scriptorium

A writing room primarily in a monastery. Beyond preserving literature, monks are attributed with developing musical notation.

Parchment

A writing substrate made from the skins of animals such as sheep, cattle, and goats.

Value of Illuminated Manuscripts

An illuminated book was equal in value to a mid-size farm or vineyard. A simple two-hundred page book required four or five months labor by a scribe, and the twenty-five sheepskins needed for the parchment were even more expensive than his labor.

Colophon

An inscription in a manuscript or book, typically at the end, that contains facts about its production. Still sometimes in use today.

Caroline minuscules

An ordered uniform script developed from the influence of the Celts that includes ascenders, descenders and improved letterspacing and wordspacing.

Copperplate engraving

At about the same time that Gutenberg was inventing movable type, an artist known only as the Master of the Playing Cards invented copperplate engraving. In copperplate engraving a single sheet of metal is painstakingly engraved, inked, and printed.

Petroglyphs

Carved or scratched signs or simple figures on rocks.

Caroline graphic renewal

Charlemagne, King of the Franks and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He sponsored a revival of learning and arts, and mandated the reform of Illuminated manuscripts 789 A.D.

Johann Gensfleich von Gutenberg

Credited with the invention of the printing press in 1450 after 20 years of technical research. His first typographic book is known as the Forty-two-line Bible, printed in both paper and vellum editions.

Pierre Didot

Credited with the stereotyping process which made longer press runs possible, thus leading to an increased dissemination of knowledge.

Uncials

Developed in the second century A.D. by the Greeks. It was a more rounded writing style developed to increase writing speed and therefore increase a scribe's productivity. Square letterforms such as an "E" could be written with 3 instead of 4 strokes, thus resulting in overall faster writing.

Francois Ambroise Didot

Didot created a typographic measurement system, the point system, in which 72 points equals 1."

Rosetta Stone

Discovered by Napoleon's troops in 1799 during a construction project, the Rosetta Stone bore an inscription rendered in three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic script, and Greek. John-Francois Champollion deciphered the inscription, starting with the names "Cleopatra" and "Ptolemy".

The Aramaic alphabet

Early Cretan and Phoenician scripts evolved into the Greek and additionally into the Aramaic alphabet. Aramaic is the predecessor of hundreds of alphabets including modern Hebrew and Arabic.

Prehistoric Visual Communications

Early human markings found in Africa that are over 200,000 years old. These are early visual communications, not art. They were used for survival, utilitarian, and ritualistic purposes.

Pictographs Evolved

Early pictographs evolved in two ways: pictorial art and the basis of writing.

Heiroglyphs

Egyptian picture-writing system. Heiroglyphics means "sacred carving" in Greek. Heiroglyphics consist of pictograms that depicted objects or beings. Heiroglyphs were used for approximately three-and-a-half millennia by the Egyptians. The last monk who knew how to read hieroglyphics is thought to have died in about 394 A.D. Heiroglyphics were considered a sacred picture system, not writing, until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone made modern translations possible.

Pictographs

Elementary pictures or sketches representing the things depicted.

William Caxton

English printer who learned the printing trade in Germany, then went back to England to print over 90 English books. He printed the first typographic English language book. His typographic printed books encompassed major English literature through 1500, unified dialects spoken in the British Isles, and stabilized the written English language.

Chi-Rho

Famous abbreviation used by illuminators to depict the name of Christ graphically in manuscripts. Chi (X) and rho (P) are the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ. The Book of Kells famously included a fabulous Chi-Rho page.

Claude Garamond

First type designer and punch cutter who established an independent type foundry that sold cast type directly to printers. After his death at the age of 80, his widow sold the contents of his workshop, resulting in a dramatic increase in his fame and influence on graphic design felt even to this day. Claude Garamond is credited with a major role in eliminating Gothic styles from the printer's repertoire of types.

Aldus Manutius

Founded Aldine Press. Humanist and scholar who published great thinkers of the Greek and Roman worlds. Invented Italic type and the pocket book. Italic type made it possible to fit more words on the page and therefore use less paper. The first pocket book was Virgil's Opera.

Carpet Page

Full pages of decorative design. These "carpet pages" closely resembled the intricate patterning of oriental carpets.

Logograms

Graphic characters that represent entire words. Chinese calligraphy consists of logograms that resulted in a huge array of characters—regular style calligraphy boasts 40,000 characters.

Notable Chinese inventions

Gunpowder, calligraphy, paper, printing, the compass. Specific to graphic design, their contributions to paper, calligraphy, and printing are important.

Exemplar

Handmade model layouts and manuscript texts used as guides for the woodcut illustrations, typesetting, page design, and makeup of books.

Albrecht Pfister

His printed book Death and the Plowman, is one of the first examples of printed popular literature, as opposed to religious and scholarly texts published by other printers of his time.

William Caslon

In 1722 he cut the first size of Caslon Old Style, a font deemed so wonderful, so beautiful and friendly to the eye, that there was a famous printer's statement still well used into the 1980's "When in doubt, use Caslon."

Lacertines

Interlaces created by fanciful animal forms. A feature of the Celtic design style. Careful observation of nature was not required of the Celtic designer or illustrator.

One possible path of development for the alphabet

Left to right: Cretan>Phoenician>early Greek>classical Greek>Latin>Modern English.

Album of Eight Leaves

Li Fangying, who merged calligraphy, painting, poetry and illustration into a beautiful communication piece.

Celtic design

Linear, complex, abstract in visual nature. Celtic manuscripts were revolutionary because writers included spaces between words (wordspacing) to assist reading.

Romain du Roi

Louis Simmoneau in 1695 created copperplate prints of master alphabets intending to establish new typographic graphic standards for the French Royal printing office.

Printing Press

Made feasible by a demand for books sponsored by a literate middle class and university students, and the arrival of paper in Venice during the fifteenth century. It took 600-1000 years for Chinese paper making techniques to migrate on trade routes from China to Europe.

Johann Fust

Mainz merchant who loaned Gutenberg money, and foreclosed on Gutenberg's workshop preventing Gutenberg from completing his Forty-two-line Bible. Fust later attempted to sell printed Bibles in Paris as manuscripts and was accused of witchcraft.

Book of Kells

Masterpiece of Celtic illuminated book design that featured lacertines, interlaces, carpet pages, and a wonderful menagerie of expressive small creatures illuminated into the pages.

Alexander the Great and the Macedonian empire

Military coordination depended on written communication; Alexander built libraries in a range of the conquered countries; and with libraries came increased demand for Greek literature.

Spread of Printing

Not known how or when printing first came to Europe, however, woodblock relief printing probably spread from China. By 1300 pictorial designs were being printed on textiles in Europe, and by 1400 Europeans were playing cards that had been block printed. First known European wood block prints were images of saints.

Pierre Simon Fournier le Juene

Often simply called Pierre Simon Fournier. Standardized type measurement; initiated typefamilies (one typeface containing various weights and widths, as well as complementary roman and italic versions).

Spread of Paper from China

Paper took between 600-1000 years to spread from China to Europe via caravan trade routes and war. Factoid: Arab warriors captured some Chinese papermakers from a Chinese invasion force attacking the Arabic city of Samarkand, Samark and became a papermaking center, which further disseminated the spread of papermaking. The first European papermill was established in Fabriano, Italy in 1276, and Troyes France, in 1348.

French Renaissance Design

Printers often used headpieces, tailpieces and fleurons (decorative elements cast like type "printer's flowers."

Book of Hours

Private devotional texts which featuring calendars and worship activities appropriate to each month in the year. Often commissioned by royalty.

Book of the Dead

Provided for the dead as a guidebook instructing the recently deceased on how to navigate the challenges, adventures, and rituals of the afterlife.

Psalter in Latin

Published in 1457 by Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer, this Latin psalter was the first book to bear a printer's trademark and imprint, printed date of publication, and colophon.

The Nuremberg Chronicle

Published in German and Latin versions in 1493 by Anton Koberger. Its 600 page, 1809 woodcuts covered the history of the world from biblical creation until 1493.

Chinese calligraphy

Purely visual language (as opposed to the alphabet).

William Playfair

Scottish author and scientist converted statistical data into symbolic graphs, and introduced the first line (also called fever) chart in his 1786 book Commercial and Political Atlas. William Playfair introduced the first pie chart in 1805 to his English translation of The Statistical Account of the United States of America.

King Hammurabi

Sumarian king credited with developing the first code of law. Hammurabi reigned from 1792-1750 b.c.,

Ideographs

Symbols representing ideas or concepts. An example of an ideograph is the $ sign which means the concept of "currency" and "dollar."

Playing cards

The Chinese invented playing cards used for games of chance. Many of the conventions of playing cards such as numerical sequences of images, division of the cards into suits, and the depiction of royalty continue to this day.

Printed paper money

The Chinese people were in daily contact with printed images on money as early as A.D. 1000.

Papyrus

The Egyptians made a paperlike substrate from the Papyrus reed that grew in the marshes of the Nile. The Egyptians eventually made eight different papyrus grades for uses ranging from royal proclamations to daily accounting.

Egyptians and illustrated manuscripts

The Egyptians were the first people to produce illustrated manuscripts in which words and pictures combined to communicate information. They also were the first to turn a great literary masterpiece "The Book of the Dead" into a more commercialized venture by selling cheaply made copies to the middle class (instead of only expensive versions to the royalty).

Earliest written records

The earliest written records are clay tablets from the city of Uruk, a Sumarian city from around 3,000 b.c.

Albrecht Durer

The famous Northern Renaissance artist who is well known for his detailed, dynamic woodcuts on such topics as The Apocalypse/Godson of Anton Koberger. Also wrote and illustrated a typographic book A Course in the Art of Measurement with Compass and Ruler that established a modular, mathematical system for textura and classical type.

Diamond Sutra

The oldest known printed manuscript from China (A.D. 868). It is about 16 feet long.

Textura

The style of medieval type mimicked by Johann Gutenberg's first metal type. Dense, heavy type with a strong condensed appearance featuring thick strokes.

The Limbourg Brothers

Three brothers who, under the patronage of the Duke of Berry, created a masterpiece Book of Hours called The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry.

Paper

Ts'ai Lun invented paper around 105 a.d. He was deified as "god of the papermakers." Natural fibers such as mulberry bark, and hemp were soaked, beaten to a pulp, and then cast into sheets of paper. Later a slippery gelatinous substance derived from Okra was used to "size" or apply a smooth surface to the paper that greatly reduced its absorbency, making it easier to write on.

Calligraphy

Ts-ang Chieh invented calligraphy. He was inspired by the claw marks of birds and the footprints of animals around 1800 b.c.

Significance of printing press

Very important, and directly responsible for increasing literacy in the fifteenth century, and is indirectly responsible for linear thought that led to rapid advances in medical and scientific thought. Ancient Greek and Roman classics fused the medieval with the classical and were the catalyst for the creation of the modern world.

Movable Typography

While the Chinese invented a concept of movable typography, the 40,000 characters required by their system limited the spread of their version of printing (so they are not credited with being the "inventors of printing."

Rebus

Words and syllables represented by pictures of objects and symbols whose names are similar to the word or syllable to be communicated. i.e. a drawing of a sun would mean "sun" or "son."

Interlace

a two-dimensional decoration formed by a number of ribbons or straps woven into a complex, usually symmetrical. A feature of the Celtic design style.

The Greeks

adopted the Phoenician alphabet (the Phoenicians were a seafaring trading culture), changed five consonants to vowels, and spread the alphabet through their city-states around 1000 b.c. The Greeks applied geometric structure and order to the uneven Phoenician characters, converting them into art forms of great harmony, beauty, and symmetrical geometric construction. The Greeks were eventually responsible for developing the left-to-right reading movement that continues to this day in Western culture. This Left-to-Right reading movement is thought to have been the invention of scribes and authors who were attempting to avoid smearing their ink as they wrote (unless great care is taken, writing from right-to-left results in ink smearing and distress).

Regular Style

calligraphy has been in continuous use for nearly two thousand years.

Islamic illuminated manuscripts

contained floral and rosette forms; intricate patterns; plant forms; and gold leaf, but for the most part did not contain representational images of people.

Sumarians

credited with the invention of writing around 3,000 bc.

Serifs

developed by Roman stonemasons to "clean up" the rough ends of letterforms.

Cretan (Minoan)

early movable type in use around 2000b.c. in the Phaistos Disk, an untranslatable round disk impressed with typelike stamps.

Charlemagne's committee of learned scholars

established new book design rules. By royal edict Charlemagne attempted to standardize page layouts, writing style, decoration, the alphabet, and the severely limiting the use of gold leaf letters in illuminated manuscripts.

The Greek alphabet

fathered the Etruscan, Latin, and Cyrillic alphabets, and eventually became the grandfather of alphabet systems used throughout the world today.

Transitional roman type

features increased contrast between strokes and serifs than early roman fonts, and has a crisp geometric quality.

The Romain du Roi

is a based on the mathematical construction of letterforms, and is considered the first transitional roman type.

William Blake

known for his poetry, illustrations, and typography. His illustrations are created in a style known as romanticism, which contrasted with the prevalent neoclassicist style of the day, as typified by Giambattista Bodoni and Pierre Didot.

Writing

made a knowledge explosion possible, along with organized libraries containing tablets about religion, mathematics, history, law, medicine, astronomy, and literature. The Stele of Hammurabi/An artifact of Babylonian culture written in cuneiform. First instance of a code of laws. The Stele of Hammurabi lists a code of laws and the consequences for violating them...usually death, as King Hammurabi didn't fool around. Steles with 282 Code ofHammurabi were placed in Babylon and surrounding Sumarian cities. Some sample codes: "a thief stealing from a child is to be put to death"; "a physician operating on a slightly wounded many with a bronze scalpel shall have his hands cut off"; and "a builder who builds a house that falls and kills the owner shall be put to death."

Incunabula

means "cradle" or "baby linen" or "rebirth". The term refers to early printed books from the invention of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg until the end of the 15th century. In early Italian incunabula printed books, empty space was left at the beginning of paragraphs for an illuminator to add initial capitals. Over time printers began to omit the initial capital due to expense; eventually the blank space came to indicate the beginning of a paragraph. (This is the beginning of indenting the first line of a paragraph)

The invention of writing

stabilized and in some measure leveled society by promoting standardizations of measurements, weights, and legal consequences. The invention of writing had impact on social order, economic progress, and technological and future cultural developments.

Vellum

the finest parchment, is made from the smooth skins of newborn calves.

Erhard Reuwich

the first illustrator known to be identified as "illustrator" in a book, for his work in the book Travels in Mount Syon, 1486.

Italian Renaissance Book Design

was innovative. Illustrators, designers and printers included in their designs page numbers, title pages, floral decoration, woodblock and cast metal ornaments, roman and italic type, and an innovative approach to the layout of illustrations with type.