Writing and typography Time Line:

Megan Colwell
From Cave Paintings to Modernist Publications

1,000 BCE 15,000-10,000 BCE Cave paintings

at Lascaux. Random placement and shifting scale signify prehistoric peoples lack of structure and sequence in recording their experiences (Meggs, 6).

Early Greek alphabet. It derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was in turn the ancestor of numerous other European and Middle Eastern scripts, including Cyrillic and Latin (notes).

Garamond establishes an independent type 200-500 CE foundry. Claude Roman Square Garamond was the Capitals and Rustic first punch cutter to Capitals. An ancient work independently 1040 CE Roman form of from printing firms. writing, and the basis The invention of His roman typefaces movable type. The for modern capital were designed with worlds first known letters. such perfection that movable type system French printers in the Square capitals for printing was were used to write 16th century were inscriptions, and less created in China able to print books often to supplement around 1040 A.D. by of extraordinary Bi Sheng during the legibility and beauty everyday handwriting (notes). Song Dynasty. (Meggs, 111)

1530 CE

1760-1840 CE

Industrial Revolution. A radical process of social and economic change. Mass production created new products and the demand for mass communication and advertising came about because of this (notes).

3,100 BCE

Earliest Egyptian pictographic writing. Ivory tablet of King Zet, First Dynasty. The fivethousand-year-old tablet is perhaps the earliest known example of Egyptian pictographic writing that evolved into hieroglyphics (Meggs,14).

197 BCE

Rosetta Stone. From top to bottom, the concurrent hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek inscriptions provided the key to the secrets of ancient Egypt (Meggs,14).

300 CE

Discovery of printing. During the Han Dynasty seals called chops were made by carving calligraphic characters into a flat surface by pushing it into a pastelike red ink made from cinnabar, and then pressed onto a substrate to form an impression (Meggs, 39)

400-600 CE.

Illuminated Manuscripts. Decorated and handwritten books produced from the late Roman Empire until printed books replaced them. Manuscript writing was expensive and very time-consuming (notes).

1450, 1455 CE.

Gutenberg perfects typographic printing; Gutenberg Bible. Johannes Gutenberg introduced printing to Europe with the invention of mechanical movable type. This is regarded as the most important event of the modern period. Spread of ideas and knowledge through fast production of books (notes).

1790s CE. Bodoni and the modern style. Bodoni led the way in evolving new typefaces and page layout that inspired the modern style roman type (Meggs, 133) ).

1796 CE Invention

of lithography. Printing is from a stone or a metal plate with a smooth surface. When the stone was moistened, the etched areas retained water; an oil-based ink could then be applied and would be repelled by the water, sticking only to the original drawing. The ink would then be transferred to a blank paper sheet, producing a printed page (notes).

of Linotype. Ottmar Mergenthaler produces the worlds 1860-1910 CE. first linecasting Arts and Crafts machine in the Movement. An USA. The linotype international design machine operator movement that enters text on rejected industry and a 90-character mass production and keyboard. The focused on handmachine assembles craft and decorative matrices, which styles. William Morris are molds for the was the leader of the letter forms, in a line movement (notes). (notes).

1886 CE. Invention

design movement that startd in Zurich, 1909-1914 CE. Switzerland and Cubism. In Cubist claimed to be antidesign, objects are art and against the analyzed, broken up carnage of WWI. The and reassembled in movement primarily an abstracted form involved visual arts, instead of depicting literature, poetry, art objects from one manifestoes, theatre, viewpoint, the artist and graphic design. depicts the subject Art techniques like from a multitude photomontage, of viewpoints to collage, assemblage, represent the subject and readymades in a greater context developed in this (notes). movement (notes).

1916 CE. Dada. A

1919 CE. Bauhaus

School. Founded by Walter Gropius in Germany, it was a school that combined crafts and find arts and was famous for its unique approach to teaching design in which it ignored real world problems to focus on the arts. The movement influenced furniture design, typography, architecture and graphic design (notes).

1941 CE. War

Posters in America. Joseph Binder, poster proposal for the U.S. Air Corps. Extreme spacial depth is conveyed by the scale change between the close up wing and aircraft information (Meggs, 360).

1826 CE. First

photograph from nature. The first photograph from nature was taken by Joseph Nipce in France. The photo shows a view looking out over the rear courtyard of the Nipce home.

1890-1910 CE.

Art Nouveau. An international philosophy and style of design. It was inspired by Asian style of calligraphic line drawings, abstraction, and simplification.

1906 CE. Lucian

Bernhard and Plakatstil. An early poster style of art that originated in Germany. The traits of this style of art are usually bold, straight font with flat colors. Shapes and objects are simplified while the subject of the poster remains detailed (notes).

1909-1930s CE. Futurism.

A revolutionary movement in which all the arts were to test their ideas and forms against the new realities of scientific and industrial society Meggs, 261).

Constructivism. An artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia which was the rejection of the idea of autonomous art. Had a great effect on modernism and influenced trends such as Bauhaus and De Stijl.

1919 CE.

1923 CE. Jan

Tschichold and the New Typography. New Typography movement brought graphics and information design to the forefront of the artistic avant-garde in Central Europe. Rejecting traditional arrangement of type in symmetrical columns, modernist designers organized the printed page as a blank field in which blocks of type and illustration could be arranged in harmonious, strikingly asymmetrical compositions.