Your ultimate guide to the history of graphic design
Get your pencils ready! We’re about to embark on an in-depth lesson about the history of graphic design. Why? Because graphic design exists everywhere around us—on web pages, social sites, mobile apps, business logos, billboards, TV commercials, restaurant signs, paper flyers, and more. And if you’re using graphic design to fuel your business, reach marketing objectives, and engage audiences, it helps to know how this artform evolved and where it might be headed.
First, let’s nail down a comprehensive definition. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, graphic design is “the art or profession of using design elements (such as typography and images) to convey information or create an effect.”
Historians can trace the origins of graphic design all the way back to cave paintings in 38,000 BCE. However, with a focus on business and marketing, we’re going to start our lesson with the first instance of graphic design as we know it today.
So, without further ado, let’s take a trip through history to explore the beginnings of graphic design, discover how it led us to where we are now, and consider what the future of graphic design might look like
The history of graphic design
The term “graphic design” first appeared in a 1922 essay by William Addison Dwiggins called “New Kind of Printing Calls for New Design.” As a book designer, Dwiggins coined the term to explain how he organized and managed visuals in his works.
Still, we can go back even further than that for our history of graphic design.
1760s: The Industrial Revolution and lithography
The Industrial Revolution, which sparked in the late 1700s, brought with it new technologies for increasing the efficiency and production of manufacturing processes—including design. As one professor noted in his lecture on the history of design systems, “Graphic design is a relatively young way of expression, primarily a response to the needs of the industrial revolution.”
Lithography was of these biggest design exports of the Industrial Revolution. Invented by Alois Senefelder, lithography is a method of printing that involves inking your design into a stone or metal surface, and transferring it to a sheet of paper. This innovation also gave way to chromolithography, which is simply lithography but with colored prints.
Here, for example, is a chromolithographic poster advertising a train system in Boston.
Rapid Transit, your ultimate guide to the history of graphic design
Image: Rapid Transit from The Boston Athanaeum Museum website
With this new method at their fingertips, people could easily design eye-catching posters for products, events, political movements, and even home decor. Lithography also freed artists from the constraints of the printing press, allowing them to hand-craft and mass-produce their own designs, instead of only using pre-cut blocks of text and imagery.
Create your own eye-catching posters with the Colorful Paint Splatter Art Children's Fundraiser Poster or the Yellow Painting Conference Poster.
Colorful Paint Splatter Art ChildrenUse this template
Yellow Painting Conference PosterUse this template
1890s: Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau was a global design movement that heavily influenced architecture, fashion, and graphic design in the late 19th century. As stated on the Tate Museum website, art nouveau is characterized by sinuous lines and flowing organic shapes based on plant forms.”
You’ve definitely seen art nouveau posters in the wild, like this famous one from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in 1893. It depicts a dance performing at the Jardin de Paris.
Art nouveau was significant because it encouraged artists to convey their subjects not exactly as they are, but rather through interpretive forms of expression, movement, and abstract representation.
1903: Wiener Werkstätte
At the birth of the 20th century, painter Koloman Moser and architect Josef Hoffmann founded the Wiener Werkstätte, meaning “Vienna workshop” to be a “productive cooperative of artisans” who valued high-quality craftsmanship.
In response to increasing industrialization, this collective prioritized individual expression and avant-garde creations. However, it did spark a trend of design characterized by its geometry and modernism, and “square style,” as in this poster:
These stark patterns and sharp lines even foreshadow the digital designs and graphic templates yet to come.
1919: Bauhaus
Modern graphic design as we know it today can be traced back to the Bauhaus school in Germany. Founded by Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus launched a new way of thinking that combined arts and crafts, classical and avant-garde styles, form and function. Bauhaus designs incorporated minimalism, geometric shapes, and simplistic, new typefaces.
