Early History of Graphic Design

Graphic Design can be seen to date back as far as 10,000BC. But what is graphic design?
Graphic design is the activity of combing Typography, illustration, photography, and printing for purposes of persuasion, information and instruction.
William Addison Dwiggins first used the term Graphic Designer  in 1922.

In other words it is the practice of creating visual form using text and image in order to communicate a particular message or feeling to someone. Communication must obviously have meaning and value. Graphic Design explains, communicates, decorate, identifies, sorts and differentiates.

Graphic Design has 3 roles. These are to identify, to promote, and to present.

Early forms of G.D. are petroglyphs or petroglyphic figures. These forms of primitive language are etched onto stones by the neolithic society. In some cases there have even been tribes using them up till the 20th century, which shows a classic example of sticking to our roots. 

For those particular people, these were very sacred and important drawings which symbolized religion and faith, So we already see people using a form of design to communicate a message and to show emotions. 

Hieroglyphs

The Sumerian civilization developed their own writing system.  Hieroglyphs are a stylized picture of an object representing a word, sound, or anything related as found in ancient Egyptian writing systems.


Alphabets


Between 2000 BC and 1000 BC, early visual language systems such as cuneiform and hieroglyphics contained a lot of complexity. In each of the these, pictographs had become rebus writing, logograms and even syllabary. However, these early writing systems remained unwieldy and required a long and hard study to master. 
For centuries, the amount of individuals who gained literacy was small. Thiir access to knowledge allowed them to acquire great power in early cultures. 
The invention of the alphabet was a massive step forward for human communications, way of life and anything inbetween.
ALPHABET= word derived from the first two letters of the Greek Alphabet, alpha and beta.  

 


Asian Contribution

Chinese changed the course of human events. Chinese inventions like compass' and gunpowder were huge changes to the world. Gunpowder was created for fireworks, and changed wars and aggression completely. 
Chinese calligraphy is an ancient writing system used today by more people than another other visual language system. Paper which is the best way of transmitting information was also created by chinese. Then came printing, duplication of words and images made the wide communication possible. 
Europeans obviously adopted these Chinese inventions and used them to conquer much of the world.
The compass was used to direct early explorers across the seas and around the world.
Firearms enabled Europeans to conquer the native populations of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. 
Printing on paper became the method of sharing European language, religion, culture and law.
so here we see a massive impact of the Asian Contribution. Without things like this, not only graphic design would be different but also the world.  

Illuminated Manuscripts

Between 1399 to 1799, Illuminated manuscripts were frequently used. These were the vibrant luminosity of gold leaf as it reflected light from the pages of handwritten books and gave the sensation that the page was actually lit up giving this dazzling effect. Nowadays, this name is used for typically all decorated handwritten books produced from the late Roman Empire until printed books replaced manuscripts after typography was developed in Europe(about 1450).