Peter Behrens

The thing that I really enjoy about Behrens work is his use of type face. I feel that as a designer he utilizes it well, especially the way it works with his designs. This is something I admire because the use of typeface is something I struggle with personally as a designer. I feel by studying his work I can even learn and understand the association with finding typeface that matches the mood of the images.

Louis Rhead

Assignment 2

Emily Bristow

History of Graphic Arts

Assignment 2

1/22/15

The renaissance was a time where strides were being made in all aspects of life, especially graphic design. There were three significant things produced at the time that largely impacted aspects of graphic design that are relevant to this day. They are the printing press, and the development of typeface and trademarks (or logos). When printing presses first came about during the renaissance era they were strictly used to print books. The introduction of printing presses allowed for a faster production process of books and design, while also allowing multiple copies to be made. Books no longer required hand drawn illustrations or writing, as they could now be printed directly together, but this was only the first innovation that began to pave the way for print today.

With the development of printing presses came the revolution of typeface. Nicolas Jensen was one of the most famous designers of the time, known for his innovation in typeface. His first roman font produced had consistent spacing between letters and within letters themselves while also being better aligned altogether. These things made his font extremely more legible than any produced before. Many of the aesthetics in his roman type are still relevant today in the font “Times New Roman”, which is so popular it is the default font on many systems today. Just as the printing press paved the way for current prints, Jensen laid down the stepping stones for font design today.

As printing presses developed and more printers like Jensen began to pop up it was decided that printers needed a sort of signature to identify the books they printed. Printers began to design individual trademarks to print on their book. These trademark images were sorts of emblems with the printers initials placed in them. Thus the beginning idea of the logo, a unique design that is identifiable to specific companies or people, and is always used in branding today. These three things were not the only developments of graphic design during the renaissance, but they were the most significant. The printing press, typeface, and logos (trademarks) were all developments that have greatly impacted graphic design since and remain to this day.

AAdobe Real Estate Logo

Assignment 1

Emily Bristow

History of Graphic Arts

Assignment 1

1/20/15

I chose to write about the section on the invention of writing because I found it the most interesting in relation to graphic arts, as well as just the beginning of history. In the section I learned about Mesopotamia culture and Egyptian culture. The thing that both had in common was having the first evident ability of recording information or events. Both cultures developed their language beginning with graphics. They would use pictures or pictographs to tell stories, and the images used often depicted the physical objects. I never thought that the actual invention of writing would come from pictures itself. Stepping back however I realize it was easier to draw what they saw, because everyone generally saw the same thing so it was a universally understood way of communication and keeping records. As the ability to express words and stories through pictographs grew though, the cultures grew along with them. The ability to record events allowed information to be passed down through the years, cultures could now grow and learn from the past because of this graphic creation in writing that was generally universal. With the creation of this skill came the development of measurement, scribes, and even recorded laws and stories. Culture could now develop among civilization with this ability to record things and thus last longer then memory. The two most fascinating things about the Egyptians hieroglyphs though was that they were more kinetic to the language and as scribes recorded things, the pictures developed into representative, simpler characters that began to resemble the letters we know today in all cultures. After reading this section I have come to the personal conclusion that graphics or graphic arts lie at the core of the development of our current cultures.