Breaking the Grid !

The Industrial Revolution was the major technological, socioeconomic and cultural change in the late 18th and early 19th century that began in Britain and spread throughout the world. During that time, an economy based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by industry and the manufacture of machinery. It began with the mechanisation of the textile industries and the development of iron-making techniques, and trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads and then railways. The first Industrial Revolution merged into the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships, railways, and later in the nineteenth century with the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation. At the turn of the century, innovator Henry Ford, father of the assembly line, stated, "There is but one rule for the industrialist, and that is: Make the highest quality goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible."

Breaking the Grid

Printing techniques using movable type had restricted graphic design to an inflexible grid: Anything that was to be mass printed in great volume needed to adhere to a system whereby type was set in consecutive rows of parallel lines. Illustrations, maps and the like were hand drawn and engraved, only allowing for limited, costly editions due to the wearage of the engraving plates. The mass productive milieu of the industrial revolution manifested itself in a unique invention called lithography and this technique was to set type free from the bondage of the compositor.

Architectural and technical drawings

The famous work entitled "French Architecture" was written and illustrated by Jacques-François Blondel between 1752-1756. The most significant churches, royal mansions, palaces, hotels, residences and other buildings of Paris, as well as holiday homes and castles on the outskirts of Paris and in other parts of France, built by the most celebrated architects". The full work contained 498 large-sized illustrations by celebrated architects showing panoramic views and detailed interior and exterior decoration composition drawings of 18th century notable buildings churches, royal palaces, monuments, parks, etc. A range of architectural styles can be viewed, and many of these buildings no longer exist or been remodelled, such as the Palace of Tuileries which was destroyed by fire in 1871. The initial four volume work was published by Charles-Antoine Jombert, one of the leading French printer-publishers of the 18th century.

Encyclopedias, maps and scientific Illustrations

Scientists illustrated their research and studies with images from early days onwards: Indeed even some of the Egyptian frescoes seem to point at scientific depictions. There are, of course, many herbariums and medicinal books in Medieval Europe that were illustrated with drawings; but it is with the onset of the renaisance and especially the baroque and the age of the enlightenment, bringing about the spirit of scientific accuracy and of research that scientific illustrations really came into their own.

Andreas Vesalius

(1514 - 1564) was a Flemish anatomist and author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica (On the Workings of the Human Body). Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy. Vesalius' name is also referred to as Andreas Vesal or Andreas van Wesel, depending on the source.

Sydney Parkinson

The voyage of HMS Endeavour (1768-1771), under the legendary Captain James Cook (1728 - 1779), was the first devoted exclusively to scientific discovery. This link below will you to a site that presents most of the botanical drawings and engravings prepared by artist Sydney Parkinson before his untimely death at sea, and by other artists back in England working from Parkinson's initial sketches.

Born in Scotland, Parkinson came to London in 1766 and was soon after engaged by Banks to work at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he worked for a year before before joining the Endeavour. One of two on board artists, neither of whom survived the voyage, Parkinson died at sea shortly after leaving Java.

The masters of type of the Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment refers to either the eighteenth century in European philosophy, or the longer period including the seventeenth century and the Age of Reason. It can more narrowly refer to the historical intellectual movement The Enlightenment, which advocated Reason as a means to establishing an authoritative system of aesthetics, ethics, and logic, which, they supposed, would allow human beings to obtain objective truth about the universe. Emboldened by the revolution in physics commenced by Newtonian kinematics, Enlightenment thinkers argued that the same kind of systematic thinking could apply to all forms of human activity.

The intellectual leaders regarded themselves as a courageous elite who would purposely lead the world into progress from a long period of doubtful tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny, which they imputed to the Dark Ages. The movement helped create the intellectual framework for the American and French Revolutions, the Latin American independence movement, and the Polish Constitution of May 3; and led to the rise of classical liberalism and capitalism. It is matched with the high baroque and classical eras in music, and the neo-classical period in the arts; it receives contemporary attention as being one of the central models for many movements in the modern period.

The 18th century brought about the ultiamte refinement in page design and typography, especially embodied in Giambattista Bodoni's work. The beautiful font "Bodoni", named after him is one we use with relish even today.

François-Ambroise Didot

(1730-1804) succeeded his father François, and was appointed printer to the clergy in 1788. All the lovers of fine books highly appreciate the editions known as "D'Artois" (Recueil de romans français, 64 vols.) and "du Dauphin", a collection of French classics in 32 vols., edited by order of Louis XVI. He also published a Bible. He invented a new printing-press, improved type-founding, and was the first to print on vellum paper.About 1780 he adapted the "point" system for sizing typefaces by width. This he established as 1/72nd of a French inch (i.e., this was before the metric system), which was larger than any of the former Imperial inch of the UK or that of the US, let alone the international inch of 25.4 mm. His unit of the point was later named after him as the didot. It became the prevailing system of type measurement throughout continental Europe, its former colonies, and Latin America. In 1973 it was metrically standardized at 0.375 mm for the European Union. The English-speaking world, on the other hand, established the unit called simply the "point," originally to the same proportion of the smaller inches of the various countries.

Giambattista Bodoni 

(1740-1813) was an Italian engraver, publisher, printer and typographer of high repute remembered for designing a typeface which is now called Bodoni. Giambattista Bodoni achieved an unprecedented level of technical refinement, allowing him to faithfully reproduce letterforms with very thin "hairlines", standing in sharp contrast to the thicker lines constituting the main stems of the characters. His printing reflected an aesthetic of plain, unadorned style, combined with purity of materials. This style attracted many admirers and imitators, surpassing the popularity of French typographers such as Philippe Grandjean and Pierre Simon Fournier. Bodoni was appointed printer to the court of Parma in 1768. Important folio editions by Bodoni are works by Horace (1791), Vergil (1793), and Homer (1808). The Bodoni Museum, named for the artisan, was opened in Parma in 1963.

Baroque Art

The first Baroque artist we are going to look at is Bernini (1598-1680). Bernini is similar to his Italian Renaissance predecessors in that he practiced architecture and sculpture, painting, stage design, and playwright. He is the last of the dazzling universal geniuses. He is a prodigy, his first works date from his eighth birthday. He had his first commission from the papal family when he was only 11. The first work of Bernini's that we are going to look at is his David, sculpted for Cardinal Borghese in only 7 months. It is strikingly different than its Renaissance predecessors. By comparing it to Michelangelo's David, we can immediately ascertain the differences between the Renaissance and the Baroque periods. The essence of Baroque art is displayed in Bernini's David. Bernini chose the most dramatic moment to convey the event, which in turn created a dynamic, theatrical energized work which occupies our space. Bernini's theatrical masterpiece is his work in the Cornaro Chapel in Rome. Here Bernini not only designed a theatrical altarpiece, with the sculpture of St. Teresa, but provided the sculpted audience as well, he sculpted members of the Cornaro family, and six Cornaro Cardinals of the preceding century to witness (or view) the ecstasy of St. Teresa.Teresa of Avila is one of the great saints of the Counter Reformation, how claimed an angel pierced her heart with a flaming golden arrow.The group of St. Teresa and the Angel is revealed in celestial light within a richly articulated niche over the altar. Again Bernini chooses the most dramatic moment, the transport of ecstasy. The angel prepares to pierce St. Teresa as he gently pulls aside her drapery. St. Teresa is leaning back with closed eyes and slightly opened mouth.The diagonal composition adds to the drama.The gilded rays of light add to the drama, but also, a mysterious light falls on the group, which comes from a hidden window, obstructed from the viewer's view.This mysterious light from heaven adds to the already heightened drama.We no longer are speaking of sculpture in the conventional sense but of a pictorial scene framed by architecture that includes us as worshipers in a religious dram that is not so much acted as revealed. Bernini used painting, sculpture, architecture, and added the natural source of light to create a hallucinatory revelation.

Geoffroy Tory

Geoffroy Tory,  born 1480 Bourges,France died 1533 a (born c. 1480, Bourges, Fr.- died c. 1533, Paris), publisher, printer, author, orthographic reformer, and prolific engraver who was mainly responsible for the French Renaissance style of book decoration and who played a leading part in popularizing in France the roman letter as against the prevailing Gothic. His important publications include a number of “Books of Hours” and his famous philological work Champfleury (1529). In this work Tory put forward the idea of accents, the apostrophe, the cedilla, and simple punctuation marks. He was appointed imprimeue du roi (“printer to the king”) by Francis I  in about 1530.

Claude Garamond

Claude Garamond born 1480 in Paris,France type founder, publisher, punch cutter, type designer.1510:trains as a punch cutter with Simon de Colines in Paris. 1520: trains with Geoffroy Tory.1530: Garamond's first type is used in an edition of the book "Paraphrasis in Elegantiarum Libros Laurentii Vallae" by Erasmus. It is based on Aldus Manutius type De Aetna, cut in 1455. 1540: King Francis I commissions Garamond to cut a Greek type. Garamonds ensuing Grec du Roi used by Robert Estienne in three sizes exclusively for the printing of Greek books. From 1545 onwards Garamond also works as a publisher, first with Pierre Gaultier and later with Jean Barbe. The first book he published is "Pia et Religiosa Meditatio" by David Chambellan.The books are set using typefaces designed by Garamond!

Aldus Manutius

The famous "Dolphin and Anchor" device of Aldus appeared for only the second time in the second state of the 1502 Dante, and was used subsequently in all his editions. It is the symbol of the ancient proverb "Festina lente" (Hurry up slowly) which Aldus had taken as a motto as early as 1499, and seems to have regularly expounded to his friends.

A grammarian and humanist, Aldus' fame is above all connected to his greatness as a typographer and editor. Aldus began his career as a humanist teacher and became known to the most important humanist circles of the time before coming to Venice around 1490. In 1493 Aldus established a printing house together with Andrea Torresani da Asolo. Aldus' publishing activity, in contrast to the vast majority of printing during the incunable period, was inspired by clear cultural and intellectual goals in addition to economic ones. Founder of the Philhellenic Academy, he contributed in a decisive manner to the study and cultivation of Greek letters inItaly. He himself edited splendid Greek, Latin and vernacular editions,and had other editions prepared for him by the best scholars in these languages.

The revolutionary impact of Aldus' editions is readily apparent when the elegant portable octavo of his 1502 Dante, printed in beautiful italic type without commentary, is compared to the ponderous incunabula of the previous decade which buried Dante's text beneath exegetical commentary. Aldus' editions invited the reader to encounter the classics directly, in an unfiltered state. In addition, the portable format and unencumbered presentation of the text appealed to the expanding public demand for Dante and the vernacular classics. In the cities among the middle classes, and in the courts, vernacular poetry was flourishing among both gentlemen and gentlewomen -- giving rise, for the first time in the Italian tradition, to a distinguished group of women poets.

The Masters of Type

The Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the period roughly from the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late middle ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. Though availability of paper and the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15 th century,the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe. As a cultural movement, it encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch, the development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in painting, and gradual but widespread educational reform. The Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man."

(Caravaggio Michelangelo)

(Caravaggio Michelangelo)

The Art of Calligraphy

It was inevitable that the upheval described above would also affect our subject matter.One of the major benefits of this new milieu of learning and enquiry was the spreading of literacy, the ability of not only to be able to read but also to write.Keeping diaries and notebooks became a widespread practice, not only amongst artist and scientist but also amongst the wealthy upper classes and the aristocracy, as did the sending back and forth of notes and letters.

Leonarda da Vinci: Florentine painter,sculptor,architect,engineer,and scholar, one of the greatest minds of the Renaissance; born at Vinci near Florence in 1452 died at Cloux near Amboise, France, 1519 natural son of  Ser Piero.He was quite self-made.His work was small in bulk, and what remains may be counted on fingers of both hands.

The Renaissance Book

The great intellectual movement of Renaissance Italy was humanism.The humanists believed that the Greek and Latin classics contained both all the lessons one needed to lead a moral and effective life and the best models for a powerful Latin style.They developed a new rigorous kind of classical scholarship,with which they corrected and tried to understand the works of the Greeks and Romans,which seemed so vital to them.

Johannes Gutenberg-Albrecht Duerer

Johannes Gutenberg

(1398-1468) was a German goldsmith and inventor who achieved fame for his invention of the technology of printing movable types during 1447. Gutenberg has often been credited as being the most influential and important person of all times, with his invention occupying similar status.The A&E Network ranked him at #1 on their People of the Millenium countdown in 1999.Block printing, where by individual sheets of paper were pressed into wooden blocks with the text and illustrations carved into them, was first recorded in Chinese history,and was in use in East Asia long before Gutenberg. Gutenberg knew of existing techniques, or invented them independently, although the former is considered unlikely because substantial differences in technique.Some also claim that the Dutchman Laurens Janszoon Coster was the first European to invent movable type.

Gutenberg began experimenting with metal typography after he had moved from his native town of Mains to Strasbourg around 1430.Knowing that wood block type involved a great deal of time and expense to reproduce because it had to be hand carved,Gutenberg concluded that metal type could be reproduced much more quickly once a single mould had been fashioned.In 1455, Gutenberg demonstrated the power of  the printing press by selling copies of two volume Bible for 300 florins each.This was equivalent of approximately three years wages for average clerk but it was significantly cheaper than a handwritten Bible that could take a single monk 20 years to transcribe.The one copy of the Biblia Sacre dated 1455 went to Paris,and was dated by the binder.(Gutenberg Bible)

Albrecht Duerer

(1471-1528)was a German painter, wood carver,engraver and mathematician.He is best known for his woodcuts in series, including Apocalypse, two series on the crucifixion of Christ, the Great Passion and the Little Passion as well as many of his individual prints,such as Knight, Death and the Devil...

His Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse part of the Apocalypse series is also celebrated.He is also known for his numerous self portraits.He is important for the history of graphic design in that he spent considerable time on the geometry of letters as well as book design.

The Printing Press

Incunabula

An incunabulum is a book,single sheet, or image that was printed before the year 1501 in Europe. These are usually very rare and fragile items whose nature can only be verified by experts. The origin of the word is the Latin incunabula for swaddling clothes used by extension for the infancy or early stages of something.

There are two types incunabula in printing the Block book printed from a single carved or sculpted wooden block for each page by the same process as the woodcut in art and the typographic book,made with individual pieces of cast metal movable type on a printing press.Many authors reserve the term incunabula for the typographic ones only.

The spread of printing to cities both in the north and in Italy ensured that there was great variety in the texts chosen for printing and the styles in which they appeared.Many early typefaces were modelled on local forms of European forms of Gothic script, but there were also some derived from documentary scripts and particularly in Italy, types modelled on handwritten scripts and calligraphy employed by humanists.

Printers congregated in urban centres where there were scholars, ecclesiastics,lawyers,nobles and professionals who formed their major customer base.

The introduction of rag paper

The word paper comes from the ancient Egyptian writing material called papyrus, which was woven papyrus plants. Paper remained a luxury item through the centuries until the advent of steam-driven paper making machines.Together with the invention of the practical fountain pen and the mass produced pencil of the same period, and in conjunction with the advent of the steam driven rotary printing press, wood based paper caused a major transformation of the 19 th century economy and society in industrialized countries.Before thies era a book or a newspaper was a rare luxury object and newspapers became slowly available to nearly all the members of an industrial society.

During the incunabula period, Europeans used rags to make paper by the following method: the rags were cut into small pieces; fermented: ground by watermill: and scooped into a mould to dry.

The Art of the Book

We look at the darkest period in humans life, we can say the spread of pestilence and plague, darkness and fear, witch hunts and illiteracy.In this types of ambiance hidden in the scriptoria of cold monasteries, under the light of indurable oil lamps, mittened against the biting cold, some of the greatest book designers that ever lived, formed some of the most beautiful books the world has ever seen.The colophons of the their works are testimony to their short lives because most of the book that they worked upon were only completed in several of their brief lifetimes,one scribe replacing the other over decades.We can call these beautiful books Illuminated Manuscripts.

The Scriptorium

A scriptorium was a room devoted to the hand lettered copying of manuscripts.Before the invention of printing by moveable type, a scriptorium was a normal adjunct to a library.In the monasteries,the scriptorium was a room,rarely a building,set apart for the professional copying of manuscripts.

Techniques

Illumination was a complex and frequently costly process.In order to make an illuminated manuscript, in the beginning the text should be written.Sheets of parchment or vellum,animal hides specially prepared for writing, were cut down to the appropriate size.When the text was complete, the illustrator set to work.

Insular/Celtic Manuscripts

Insular manuscripts were written  in uncial or half uncial scripts and were the first manuscripts to introduce spaces between words to make it easier to read.Three forms of decoration are commonly found in insular manuscripts:ornamented borders enclosing full page illustrations; ornate initials used for beginning of gospels and  important passages:and carpet pages, which are full pages of decorative designs.

Ottonian manuscripts

The Ottonian style is associated with the courts of the Saxon emperors.Gospel books, pericopes and Apocolypse were popular than entire bibles. Ottonian manuscripts were influenced by Byzantium,featuring the  use of burnished gold backgrounds and large eyed figure in rigid, hieratic poses.

Carolingian Manuscript

The Carolingian style is associate with the court of Charlemagne who set out to revive book design and production.In this period manuscripts were made for imperial and aristocratic use as well as for ecclesiastical use.

Romanesque manuscripts

The Romanesque style, which dates from the year 1000,was an international rather than a national style and examples of Romanesque manuscripts come from a wide geographical area.During this period a wider variety of books produced,including large Bibles and commentaries, lives of Saints,theological works,missals and Psalters as well as Gospels.

Gothic manuscripts

The Gothic style dates from around 1150AD and like the Romanesque was an international style.The rise of universities and cathedral schools led to an increased demand for books of all kinds.During the Gothic period books became smaller and more delicate,with increased integration between illustrations and text.Generally there was less text on page,with blank spaces in lines of text being filled with decorative bars.Illustrations were sometimes combined with borders and marginal sketches and grotesques were reintroduced.

The Book of Hours

A Book of Hours is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript.Each Book of Hours is unique.The Books of Hours were composed for use by lay people who wished to incorporate elements of monasticism into their devotional life.

The Alphabet

An alphabet is a standard set of letters that is used to write one or more languages based on the general principle which the letters represent phonemes of the spoken language. The history of the alphabet began in ancient Egypt.The first pure alphabet emerged around 2000 BC in ancient Egypt.Then, alphabetic principles had already been introduced Egyptian hieroglyphs for a millennium (see Middle Age alphabets). 

The Phaistos Disc

The Phaistos Disc is a curious archaeological find, likely dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age.The target of this and even its original geographical place of manufacture, remain discussed, making it one of the most famous mysteries or archaeology.Each disc has a total 241 tokens,including 45 unique signs.

The Greeks

Modern scripts of Europe is the main source of the Greek alphabet with the adoption of Phoenician letter forms and maintains to the present day, the history of the Greek alphabet began.The Phoenician alphabet was rigorously speaking abjad in the other words it represented only consonants.Its classical and modern form,the alphabet has 24 letters,ordered from alpha to omega.

The Romans

Several hundred years later, the Romans used the Greek alphabet as the basis for the uppercase alphabet that we know today.They also corrected the art of handwriting,fashioning several distinctive styles of lettering which they used for different purposes the Roman alphabet consisted only of capital (upper case) letters.The lower case letters developed in the Middle Ages from cursive writing, first as the uncial script,and later as minuscule script.The old Roman letters were retained for formal inscriptions and for emphasis in written documents.

Pictogram-Ideogram-Logogram

Pictogram

A pictogram, also called a pictogramme or pictograph is an ideogram that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and graphic systems in which the characters are to considerable extent pictorial in appearence.Pictography is a form of writing which uses representational, pictorial drawings.It is a basis of cuneiform and to some extent, hieroglyphic writing, which also uses drawings as phonetic letters or determinative rhymes.

   

(Water,rabbit,deer pictographs on a replica of an Aztec Stone of the Sun)

Ideogram

An ideogram or ideograph is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention;others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as pictograms.

Logogram

A logogram or logograph is a single grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). This stands in contrast to other writing systems, such as alphabets, where each symbol (letter) primarily represents a sound or a combination of sounds.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictogram

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logogram

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideogram

Cuneiform

History has been beginning with invention of writing and this has been cuneiform as you know.People preferred stones because of lack of paper.After the invention of papyrus term of writing on stone finished and also cuneiform broke up.

[Sumerians believed in education.Record keeping was very important to them.Their written language began as pictographs, pictures of things that acted as words.Pictographs worked,but they were rather cumbersome.Soon,Sumerians started to use wedge-shaped symbols for objects and ideas instead of pictures.Today we call this written language wedge-shaped symbols cuneiform.]

A few examples for cuneiform...

Look at cuneiform tablets!

Rocks and Caves

In first week our topic is rocks and caves. We have seen too much pictures which are drawen by primitive people (hunters and gatherers) into walls of caves.There were examples which have been done before thousand years ago by primitive's.These paintings are quite impressive and different...

According to me geoglyphs are more interesting because I am impressed by large motifs.Geoglyph is a large desing or motif (generally greater than 4 metres)produced on the ground and typically formed by clastic rocks or similarly durable elements of the landscape, such as stoınes, stone fragments, gravel or earth.For instance, Geoglyphs on deforested land in the Amazon rainforest.



















For more information look at this video...

Welcome

I opened the blog for VA 312 course welcome to all of you! The topics that we have read in the lesson were about nice and controversial topics which helped me broaden my view of the history of visual communication.Every week you will see a new sharings about lecture :)