Starting in late eighteenth century England with the invention of John Watt’s steam-powered engine and continuing into the late nineteenth, the Industrial Revolution would live to see societies across the west become more urban and commerce-oriented, shifting power from the aristocracy to capitalist manufacturers and merchants (Meggs & Purvis, p. 151). Printing and graphic design during this period would be driven by early marketing and technological advancements, with a focus in content shifting from philosophical to more materialistic ends (Meggs & Purvis, p. 151). The components of design and production, which were previously all done by a singular craftsman, were now split up amongst different specialized roles and machines, reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of the printing process along the way (Meggs & Purvis, p. 151). In doing so, the approach to graphic design would be irrevocably split into several focuses and built together in layers, setting the stage for the modern design process.
In the lead up to the Industrial revolution, standard typography had generally shifted from old to transitional and modern Roman typefaces, which emphasized verticality and contrast in characters (Meggs & Purvis, p. 129). As opposed to the even-weighted strokes characteristic of traditional gothic and handwritten lettering, the new typefaces leveraged the printer’s ability to create strokes of differing weights, ending them in neat, tapered serifs (Meggs & Purvis, p. 129,137-142). Created using a mathematical grid, they were meant to pull your eyes along in a pleasing effect, making them primarily useful for books and other densely packed texts (Meggs & Purvis, p. 129). As advertising and titles became more prominent, however, marketers looked for new typefaces that would be more expressive and eye-catching to a passing viewer, thus beginning a revolution in typographic design and convention (Meggs & Purvis, p. 152). Hundreds of new type families would be created for different advertisements, comprised of similar, interchangeable fonts with varying characteristics such as italics, weight, scale, and spacing (Meggs & Purvis, p. 130,152). Certain design motifs would keep reappearing along the way, such as ‘fat-face’ fonts, which increased the weight and contrast of characters to produce a strong, bolded effect (Meggs & Purvis, p. 152-153). Other prominent motifs included the so-called ‘Egyptian’ fonts, with thick, slab-like serifs and geometric construction, and ‘Tuscan’ fonts, which conversely had thin, curving serifs and rounded lettering (Meggs & Purvis, p. 153). Perhaps most importantly, these would lay the inspiration for ‘sans-serif’ fonts, which recreated the geometric proportions of previous typefaces, but without a serif (Meggs & Purvis, p. 155). Though its use would be awkward at first, it would eventually lead into the proliferation of many fonts we see today. Along with these typefaces, font designers would also begin playing with more novelty characteristics, such as outlines, perspective, and even reversed printing (Meggs & Purvis, p. 153-154). For better use on posters and large prints, new, stronger wooden types would be reintroduced such that fonts could be created that were larger, lighter, and more economical than the standard metal type (Meggs & Purvis, p. 155-157).
The industrial revolution also brought with it mechanical innovations within printing and typesetting, reducing the manpower and time needed to start and finish a print job. The first major innovation since Gutenberg’s original design came in 1800 with the creation of the first all cast-iron printing press, which reduced the force necessary to print while also increasing the size of available printing space (Meggs & Purvis, p. 158). This design would lay the groundwork for the steam-powered press just ten years later, which replaced the pressure mechanism with a roller that would carry the paper against a bed containing the typeface, automating the process and improving its efficiency (Meggs & Purvis, p. 158). Over time, the steam press would be refined to add more cylinders as well as reposition the typeface on the cylinder itself, resulting in a press that could print almost 8,000 sheets an hour, compared to the 250 it started out at (Meggs & Purvis, p. 158). To meet the increasing speed and requirements of printing, the first papermaking machine was created in 1803 and inventors began a race to automate the process of setting together type (Meggs & Purvis, p. 160). Though the presses and journalists could theoretically improve almost exponentially, the task of translating a written article into an array of metal type character by character became a major bottleneck in the process, taking a skilled team of typesetters hours to finish a single page (Meggs & Purvis, p. 160-161). It would take until 1886 for American Ottmar Mergenthaler to perfect a solution known as the linotype, which used a keyboard and matrix to compose metal type along a page (Meggs & Purvis, p. 161). With these machines, the time and costs required of printing sank to unprecedented levels, allowing printing to solidify its prominence in daily life.
Along with mechanical innovation, the era would also invite new inventions that would forever more change the landscape of graphic design. The first to come about was the invention of lithography around the end of the eighteenth century, which introduced another form of printing whereby an artist could reproduce the nuances and shading of a drawn piece without the discrete outlines common to woodblocks (Meggs & Purvis, p. 174). By leveraging the immiscible property of oil and water, lithography worked by first drawing on a flat surface – typically limestone – with a grease pencil, and then etching it such that the oils became rooted within its pores (Meggs & Purvis, p. 174). Next, a printer would then pour a light layer of water that would be absorbed into the stone, and afterward apply an oil-based ink to the surface, which correspondingly only sticks to the oiled drawing (Meggs & Purvis, p. 174). Using a press, the ink could then be transferred onto sheets of paper, creating a reusable method of printing the fine details of artists’ drawings (Meggs & Purvis, p. 174). Eventually, this process would expand into chromolithography in the latter half of the nineteenth century, which used multiple stones with different colored inks and variations of the same drawing to produce a full-color print (Meggs & Purvis, p. 174). With as little as 5 stones for flesh tones, gray backgrounds, red, yellow, and blue, a printer would be able to replicate a realistic, nigh-photographic portraits and landscapes onto paper and tin (Meggs & Purvis, p. 174-175). Perhaps even more importantly, the other major milestone of the Industrial Revolution was the invention of photography following a string of discoveries and innovations related to the capturing, refining, and printing of photographs. Photography itself relied on a well-known principle whereby if one had a dark box with a small lens, then the light coming through would recreate the image of brightly-lit objects outside of it (Meggs & Purvis, p. 161). Though the science had been well-documented for quite some time – with a basic handheld ‘camera obscura’ (Latin for ‘Dark Chamber’) existing as early as 1665 CE – the race was on to figure out how to make the image permanent and transfer it onto paper (Meggs & Purvis, p. 161). The first photographic image would be created by Joseph Niépce, who used light-sensitive sheets of pewter to capture and harden images of drawings laid on top of it when left in the sun in a process known heliogravure, or ‘sun engraving’ (Meggs & Purvis, p. 161-162). After his death in 1833, personal friend Louis Jacques Daguerre would take over his research and implement the mechanism in a camera obscura, replacing the pewter sheets with silver-coated copper plates and iodine crystals to create more clear, precise, and vibrant photographs (Meggs & Purvis, p. 162). Though it had obvious limitations such as the meticulous sensitizing required and its susceptibility to glare, he would present and release the invention as the Daguerrotype in 1839 to major success (Meggs & Purvis, p. 162-163). Meanwhile, English inventor William Henry Talbot was experimenting with ‘photogenic drawings’ on paper, whereby he soaked the paper in light-sensitive silver-chloride and exposed it to light while covering it in paper or lace, effectively capturing an image where the bright, non-covered parts came out dark while the dark, covered parts came out light (Meggs & Purvis, p. 163). Working with chemist Sir John Herschel, Talbot was able to implement it within a camera obscura and use the ‘negative’ produced to contact print a separate ‘positive’ afterwards (Meggs & Purvis, p. 163-165). Releasing in 1840 as the Calotype, Talbot’s photos may have not been as clear as the Daguerrotype due to the necessary process of reprinting the positive but were widely preferred for the ability to reprint any image at all (Meggs & Purvis, p. 165). Through advancements in photochemistry, wet- and dry-plate methods were eventually created to improve the detail and resolution captured in ‘positive’ photos, making photography more effective as well as accessible (Meggs & Purvis, p. 165). However, though the process of positive recreation had been improved, printing photographs was still largely inefficient compared to traditional woodblock illustrations, leading to a search for quicker method of mass printing them (Meggs & Purvis, p. 165-166). The solution, a process whereby a photograph was broken down into tiny ‘halftone’ dots of various sizes, was created in 1881 by American Frederick E. Ives and enabled newspapers to print photos with seemingly continuous tones and detail (Meggs & Purvis, p. 166). Colored halftones were perfected in the late 1890s, allowing illustrations to capture the full range of colors in an extension very similar to chromolithography (Meggs & Purvis, p. 166).
The Industrial Revolution was perhaps one of the most important eras in recognizing and transitioning graphic design to where it is today. Mass production brought with it quick, timely, and increasingly detailed graphics, launching advertisements, newspapers and magazines into popularity and daily life across the Western World. Chromolithography would launch advertisements and magazines into a new age of vibrancy and detail, with almost 700 American firms alone using it in conjunction with political campaigns, holiday cards, packing, and even trading cards (Meggs & Purvis, p. 175-178). On signboards and posters, chromolithography would be used with woodblock printing to announce and depict incoming circuses, festivals, and even world fairs (Meggs & Purvis, p. 179). Magazines would be hosted, boasting it painting-like detail of its lithographic prints and coming with hundreds of eye-catching advertisements (Meggs & Purvis, p. 184). In the newspaper industry, photography would take reporting by storm, bettering documenting life around America and Europe during the turn of the twentieth century (Meggs & Purvis, p. 169-170). Perceptions of the American Civil War, for example, would be drastically impacted by photographs and woodblock illustrations of the front lines, contributing to rising anti-war sentiments amongst the public (Meggs & Purvis, p. 169,181). Amongst the best of these, illustrator Thomas Nast of Harper’s Weekly would be lauded by President Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant for his efforts in capturing the war, and would later go on to create the modern political cartoon in his struggle exposing William Tweed of Tammany Hall (Meggs & Purvis, p. 181-182).
In the period following the Industrial Revolution, graphic design would be reconsidered not only as a means to deliver information, but as an artform in and of itself (Meggs & Purvis, p. 189). In a movement reclaiming ‘Arts and Crafts,’ the layout of books would be rethought and redesigned to capture the nuance and detail of traditional Illuminated Manuscripts, filling in pages with beautiful decoration that promoted imagination and readability (Meggs & Purvis, p. 192-195). The ‘Art Nouveau’ era would start, trying to replicate the naturalism and spontaneity of the world around it (Meggs & Purvis, p. 212-213). Graphics would find themselves in an era of reconsideration and experimentation, leading to some of the most important innovations of the later twentieth century.