Victorian Era and Manifestos

The Victorian Era reminds me of the Rococo designs of the 1730s because of the fancy work. However, in Rococo, it was intricate and delicate, while in the Victorian Era, it was CRAZY, not delicate. Everything was mushed together, too much was in Victorian Era posters, promotion cards, and scrap cards. It blows my mind that so much crap was "collaged" together without much thought. Styles didn't match. In posters, aesthetic was literally a confusion because of all the over the top stuff. Posters were just overly suffocated/stuffed. Blackletter and other types with fancy designs that do not go with each other makes the Victorian Era prints recognizable in time.

1837 chromolithography

The first iron printing press made in 1800 by Earl Stanhope. Greater force with less human power because of gear system. An advancement compared to the Guttenburg press.

Steam powered double cylinder press. Double = more impressions. 

Lutites= people against new technologies.

Penny papers... newspapers made with steam press. broader audience because of low price. Newspapers start to sell ADs to make money.

John Hooper: The first AD man. They go to newspapers and get your AD into the paper. The first AD agency. 

Ottmar Mergenthaller in 1886 finished the linotype machine. A line of type machine. Iron cast. Lead bar was called a mouse. Interesting how the current computer terminology relates to the linotype machine. 

Victorian Era Graphics are marked by their aesthetic confusion. OVER THE TOP. SUFFOCATED PRINTS. Marked by strong moral and religious beliefs. So much stuff made that most of it was crap. The design and the quality was not cared. So much stuff. Blackletter and other types with fancy designs that do not go with eachother. So much going on.

Lithography: stone printing. drawing directly on the stone. blends of color possible, and text in bent directions. chromolithography, with color.

Ephemera: printed things not meant to be collected (like movie tickets and street posters)

Scrapcards: printed on chromolithic. Promotion cards with little colored pictures. Promotion of entertainment. early 1900s. 1880s. Idealized images of youth in children. pattern work and texture. Exotic animals. Flowers. Illusion of depth: Tromploy. Father Christmas. TYPICAL WORK OF LUIS PRANG.

Packaging. Start of big companies with "brand" and logo. Printing on tin. Chromolithography allows printing on tin. ADs get sneaky.

Letterpress, 1866. use illusion of depth with size type changes. good for small type, structure, and organization.

Mixed, 1856. use of wood type, paste in a chromoprint. use the best means of production techniques.

Woodcut, 1856. light wood= bigger letters to print bigger posters.

Walter Crane's Absurd ABC, 1874. Children's book. Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway were another two children's illustrators. 

Harper's company. Newspapers, magazines, and Bibles made. 

Thomas Nast: father of political cartoon. made Uncle Sam, Republican elephant and Democrats donkey. 

Bicycle came out and was the popular thing. In posters.

Heinz. pickle. gallery-like building for Heinz with artwork and workers. Female workforce. 

Manifestos. Beautiful things are valuable just because they're valuable. 

William Morris was a wealthy philosopher during the manifestos. He rethinks about society, to return to the old high quality of craftsmanship. Flawed philosophy because it costs more money to make things of better quality than the quick industrial workmanship.

AH246 Week 2: Evolution of Letters, Typography, & The Industrial Revolution

Today we talked about evolution of letters in type and the Industrial Revolution. The most intriguing part was the typography, the way letterforms changed slightly through the times from Old Style to Transitional to Modern, etc. Not only did the typographers take from history, but also do graphic designers, while using the current technologies to make things work. For example, lead is good for small type and wood is good for the bigger sized type and was used during the crazy poster time with just so many different typefaces.

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Storytelling was probably the first most important thing before picture writing and cuneiform. Pictographs were turned to form cuneiform.

phonetics -> greeks -> roman letters

~800AD was when the Celtic art style with decorative elements was made.

Coronation Gospels 800AD

Alcuin of York

Xylography, woodcarving. playing cards.

Velum and paper

Letters of indulgence 

Education was fundamentally altered because of printing. BECAUSE OF REDILY AVAILABLE BOOKS.

Aesop. Frame lost in images.

Fall of Rome 476AD

1465

1467

Sevyheym and Pannartz - Evolution to Roman letters.built off of Caroline minuscules. First example of a tipend(added material and labor to printing)

1640; Steven Daye brought printing to the Colonies in 1639.

IN WHAT WAYS ARE STEVEN DAYE AND GUTENBERG ALIKE?

1695: Engraving of letterforms. Square divided into measurement system for all letters. More precision, less hand-like.

Romain du Roi printing.... no one was allowed to use this King's typeface. 

Rococo design...1730s. Fancy French art, floral and intricate like the Manuel of Typography by Pierre Simon Fournier le Jeune.

Copperplate engraving become books and influences letterform designers. Metal type.

BODONI. Giambattista Bodoni, 1771: return to the classical forms. Neoclassical style. MODERN TYPEFACES. Bodoni gets rid of brackets and makes display faces of Fatface. Didot is similar typeface. 

Industrial Revolution --- the need to grab attention with boldfaces and fatfaces. Brands start appearing.

Wood comes back... the router copies and makes printing easier.

Manufacture and Industrial means. Machine power. The factor system and division of labor. Rise of middle class. Growing literacy and the rise of a revolution. 

It cools unevenly.

Egyptian. 1815 Vincent Figgins. Egyptian faces don't look egyptian. Uneven weight. Not a lot of contrast. Slab serif.

Wheat-pasting. Composed posters, not designed, more practical. Lead is good for small type and wood is good for the bigger sized type.

Poster houses decline 

Lithography

The 5 Historical Font Families

Old Style... Garamond

Transitional... Baskerville

Modern.... Bodoni face, no brackets

Egyptian... even weight, *slab serifs, Century

Sans Serif... no serif

//Beyond that... display, black letter, hand, script, dingbats.

Point size is measured from highest to lowest part of letter. Cap height to descender line. x-height changes font size.

Leading is measured 20% above the face size...

12 points = 1 pica

6 pica = 1 inch

72 points = 1 inch

AH246 Week 1: Lascaux to Gutenberg

The beginning of art was ritualistic. Art was not done for art's sake. 

The caves of Lascaux show animals and hunters. 

Cuneiform was the first writing, which is very abstract.

Capitals quadrata are Roman squared capitals

Capitalis rustica are rustic capitals, as in old Roman calligraphy  

Caroline minuscule is script standardization where lower case letters come from.

The Book of Kells is a Celtic book, a new style bringing in decorative elements to first letters of a sentence or paragraph. The start of initial caps. 

Vatican, Virgil, 5th century 

1400s playing cards were made possible by the advances of technology: Woodblock printing. Devotional card: St. Christopher. Xylography is printing with the wood technique of woodblock printing. This advance in technology made learning how to make paper valuable because there would be a lack of sheep skins.

Death books---the art of dying--- was a part of early church propaganda in the 1400s, black plague. Blackletter typography and color images were used in these books of the 1400s.

Factors for woodblock printing:

1) a growing middle class--- the need for someone to buy

2) students in an expanding university--- an emerging literate class

3) increased literacy

= all equates to demand for printing.

Johannes Gutenberg

Gutenberg modified the wine press and used it to make ink and a system casting(letterform made from molding) and alloy.

Blackletter and Textura were used. He didn't make new letterforms. He based letterforms off of what was the letter style of the current day.

1438: Gutenberg comes up with printing press. Andreas Dritzehn was his business partner, lending him the money.

mid-1400s= beginning of printing

Renaissance. cutting type.

Johannes Gutenberg and Joahann Fust (or Faust) share a partnership and print the Gutenberg Bible. 210 copies.

Quality of printing made better by Schoeffer. 

Ligature: two characters made as one unit. fi example

Incunabula: infancy of printing. The first 50yrs of printing.

Fleurons: "printers"' flowers --- cast decorative elements; ornaments such as leaves or flowers.