Graphic design – Printing, Typography, Layout

While the creation of manuscripts led to such high points in graphic design, the art and practice of graphic design truly blossomed with the development of printmaking technologies such as movable type. Antecedents of these developments occurred in China, where the use of woodblock, or relief, printing, was developed perhaps as early as the 6th century ce. This process, which was accomplished by applying ink to a raised carved surface, allowed multiple copies of texts and images to be made quickly and economically. The Chinese also developed paper made from organic fibres by 105 ce. This paper provided an economical surface for writing or printing; other substrates, such as parchment and papyrus, were less plentiful and more costly to prepare than paper.

Surviving artifacts show that the Chinese developed a wide range of uses for printing and that they achieved a high level of artistry in graphic design and printing from an early date. Artisans cut calligraphic symbols into woodblocks and printed them beautifully; printed sheets of paper bearing illustrations and religious texts were then pasted together to make printed scrolls. By the 9th or 10th century, paged woodblock books replaced scrolls, and literary, historical, and herbal works were published. Paper money and playing cards were also designed, their designs cut into woodblocks and printed. Chinese alchemist Bi Sheng invented a technique for printing with movable type about 1041–48. However, this technology did not replace the hand-cut woodblock in Asia, in part because the hundreds of characters used in calligraphic languages made setting and filing the movable characters difficult.

Chinese inventions slowly spread across the Middle East and into Europe. By the 15th century, woodblock broadsides and books printed on paper were being made in Europe. By 1450 Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz (Germany) invented a method for printing text from raised alphabet characters cast on movable metal types. After this, printed books began to replace costly handmade manuscript books. Designers of early typographic books in Europe attempted to replicate manuscripts, often designing type styles based on current manuscript lettering styles. When the type was printed, spaces were left for illuminators to add pictures, ornate initials, and other decorative material by hand. In this way, the compositor or typesetter was in effect the designer as he set the type. Some surviving copies of Gutenberg’s landmark 42-line Bible have headers, initials, and sentence markers applied by hand in red and blue inks.

Over time, typographic books developed their own design vocabulary. By the mid-15th century, printers combined woodblock illustrations with typeset text to create easily produced, illustrated printed books. They printed woodblock decorative borders and ornamental initials along with the type, subsequently having colour applied by hand to these printed elements. The first complete printed title page—identifying the book title, author, printer, and date—was designed for Regiomontanus’s Calendarium in 1476.

The prevalence of movable type and increasingly advanced printing technology in Europe meant that, while other cultures continued to create manuscript designs and printed communications, major advances in graphic design over the next several centuries would often be centred in Europe.