ARTS 222 Notes 8/25/14

History of Graphic Design

Brief overview of Graphic Design

Lascaux Cave Paintings (France, designed to tell a story and communicate with ppl)
Mid 1400s   Johannes Gutenberg created the moveable type press, facilitated distribution of printed materials to the masses

william addison dwiggins...coined the term graphic design in 1922
wrote influential essays on design

1984...apple invented the mac (Macintosh)...advanced the era of computer based graphic design

A good designer is:

• a good communicator
• visual problem solvers - address the problem and solve it in a visual way... create a visual representation
• keeps audience in mind at all times

Influential names in graphic design:

Saul Bass (1950's)
Chip Kidd (modern)
Jessica His
Pentagram

What is Typography?

The art or craft of arranging, setting, and designing type
Historical Aspects of Type- started with Wood Type in East Asia, then metal type (Gutenberg's press)
Adobe InDesign allows for faster type arrangement and usage (no longer setting individual letterforms)

Typeface vs. Font.... font is a computer file, the carrier or file for what is inside of it (the typeface)
the typeface is the designed portion....people who design fonts are typeface designers

the anatomy of a typeface:

cap height (the size of the capital letter)
x-height (height of the x)
baseline (the measurement...where all the letters rest, a ground for the typeography)
descender - anything that dips below the baseline (like a y)
ascender....goes above the cap height
terminal...a decorative element (like the top of the a or the bottom of a y
bowl  (the round part of the d, b, etc.)

Type Classifications:

serif or oldstyle
characterized by "finishing strokes"...now called serifs
ex. garriff...finishing strokes purposely laed your eye through the text

sans-serif
no finishing strokes, modern looking
sans meaning "without"

slab-serif or block
characterized by thick, block-like serifs, more masculine looking