A Concise Graphic Design Chronology, Part 1

1476

The Printing Press

English merchant and diplomat William Caxton introduced the printing press to England in 1476 and was the country's first printer. Amongst the achievements credited to Caxton is his standardisation of the English language by homogenising the regional dialects through the printed word, which also helped to expand English vocabulary.

1447

Moveable Type

Johannes Gutenberg (1398-1468) invented moveable type printing technology in 1447 with a press that was similar in design to those used in Germany's Rhineland to produce wine. This was a revolutionary development that allowed the mass production of books at relatively low cost, which formed part of an information explosion in Renaissance Europe.

1799

The Rosetta Stone

The stone, carved in 196BC with an inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphs, demotic and Greek, was found near Rosetta (Rashid) in 1799. The three scripts of the same text provided a valuable key that helped to decipher hieroglyphs.

1840

Penny Black

Create by Rowland Hill, the world's first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued in 1840 as part of the British postal service reforms, and was a means of prepaying the delivery of letters. The stamp featured the profile of Queen Victoria, the reigning monarch, and letters in its bottom corners referred to rows and columns, which indicated the stamp's position on the printed sheet, such as 'a', 'AB' or 'GD', as pictured here.

1851

The Great Exhibition

Held at London's Hyde Park between May and October 1851, and at the height of the Industrial Revolution, The Great Exhibition featured displays of culture and industry and celebrated industrial technology and design. The exhibition was housed in a glass and cast-iron structure, better-known as Crystal Palace, which was designed by Joseph Paxton.

1886

Linotype

Invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler in 1884, the line-casting machine produced a metal slug that contained a single line of type. Characters were input using a keyboard that was not dissimilar to a typewriter. The machine assembled brass character matrices into a line, which it then cast.

1886

Monotype

Tolbert Lanston developed a mechanical method of punching type from cold strips of metal, which were set (typeset) in Washington, USA. In 1896 Lanston patented the revolutionary monotype caster. It cast single letters in lead and composed them into a page. This allowed corrections to be made at the character level rather than having to recast a whole line, which had been the case previously with linotype.

1892

Aristide Bruant, Toulouse-Lautrec

French post-impressionist painter and art nouveau illustrator Henri Toulouse-Lautrec depicted in the seedy side of late nineteenth century Paris in paintings and posters that expressed a profound sympathy with humanity. Although lithography was invited in Austria by Alois Senefelder in 1796, Toulouse-Lautrec helped it accomplish the successful fusion of art and industry.

1896

Simplicissimus

Thomas Theodor Heine (1867-1948) another early proponent of lithography, co-founded and drew cover illustrations for German satirical magazine Simplicissimus. Heine's covers combined brash and politically daring content with a modern graphic style.

1850

The Industrial Revolution

The second of two phases of a major technological, socio-economic and cultural change that began in late eighteenth century Britain and saw the replacement of an economy based on manual labour with one dominated by industry and machine manufacture. The second phase began circa 1850 and saw the rise of the mechanical printing industry and its consequent demand for typefaces.

1910

Modernism

Modernism was shaped by the industrialisation and urbanisation of Western society. Modernists departed from the rural and provincial zeitgeist, prevalent in the Victorian era, rejecting its values and styles in favour of cosmopolitanism. Functionality and progress became key concerns in the attempt to move beyond the external physical representation of reality through experimentation in a struggle to define what should be considered 'modern'.

1916

Johnston Underground

This striking sans-serif font was created by Edward Johnston for use on the signage of the London Underground. Originally called Underground, it has also been called Johnston's Railway Tpye and Johnston, and features the double-storey 'g'.