CHAPTER 9: GRAPHIC DESIGN AND

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

MA2 – HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
✓LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this chapter, the students should be able to:
❑Examine the pivotal innovations in typography and printing technologies
during the Industrial Revolution and their impact on graphic design.
❑Analyze the role of photography as a new communications tool, exploring its
development and application in the field of printing and design.
❑Investigate the evolution of graphic design during the Victorian era,
emphasizing the emergence of lithography, the Boston school of
chromolithography, and the design language of this period.
The Industrial Revolution, which is usually said to have occurred
first in England between 1760 and 1840, was a radical process of social
and economic change. Energy was a major impetus for the conversion
from an agricultural society to an industrial one.
 Greater human equality sprang from the French and American
Revolutions and led to increased public education and literacy. The
audience for reading matter proliferated accordingly. Graphic
communications became more important and more widely accessible
during this period of incessant change. As with other commodities,
technology lowered unit costs and increased the production of printed
materials. In turn, the greater availability created an insatiable
demand, and the era of mass communications dawned.
Handicrafts greatly diminished as the unity of design and
production ended. Earlier, a craftsman designed and fabricated a chair
or a pair of shoes, and a printer was involved in all aspects of his craft,
from typeface design and page layout to the actual printing of books
and broadsheets. Over the course of the nineteenth century, however,
the specialization of the factory system fractured graphic
communications into separate design and production components.
INNOVATIONS IN TYPOGRAPHY
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Other founders designed and cast fatter letters, and type grew
steadily bolder. This led to the invention of fat faces (Fig. 9–3), a major
category of type design innovated by Cotterell’s pupil and successor,
Robert Thorne (1754–1820), possibly around 1803. A fat-face
typestyle is a roman face whose contrast and weight have been
increased by expanding the thickness of the heavy strokes. The stroke
width has a ratio of 1:2.5 or even 1:2
to the capital height.
9–3. Robert Thorne, fat-face types, 1821. Although the
record dates these designs to William Thorowgood’s
1821 publication of New Specimen of Printing Types,
Late R. Thorne’s, it is generally thought that Thorne
designed the first fat faces in 1803. The contrast between
thick and thin is much greater than in modern typefaces
such as Didot or
Bodoni. Various sizes
By the turn of the century
Figgins had designed and cast a
complete range of romans and
had begun to produce scholarly and foreign faces. The rapid tilt in
typographic design taste toward modern-style romans and new
jobbing styles after the turn of the century seriously affected him, but
he responded rapidly, and his 1815 printing specimens showed a full
range of modern styles and antiques (Egyptians), the second major
innovation of nineteenth-century type design (Fig. 9–4). By 1840
Figgins’s antique fonts had
become far more refined
(Fig. 9–5).
9–4. Vincent Figgins, two lines
pica, Antique, c. 1815. The inspiration for
this highly original design, first shown by
Figgins, is not known. Whether Figgins,
Thorne, or an anonymous sign painter first
 invented this style is one of the mysteries
surrounding the sudden
appearance of slab-serif letterforms.
Various sizes
9–5. Vincent Figgins, sixteen-line pica,
Antique, 1840. This represents a much larger
and more refined version of the two lines
pica, Antique, c. 1815. Various
sizes
Theantiques convey a
bold, mechanical feeling
through rectangular slab serifs, even weight throughout the letters, and
short ascenders and descenders. In Thorowgood’s 1821 specimen book
of Thorne’s type, the name Egyptian—which is still used for this style—
was given to slab-serif fonts (Fig. 9–6).
 Figgins’s 1815 specimen book also presented the first
nineteenth-century version of Tuscan-style letters (Fig. 9–10). This style,
characterized by serifs that are extended and curved, was put through
an astounding range of variations during the nineteenth century, often
with bulges, cavities, and ornaments.
 9–10. The top two specimens are typical Tuscan
styles with ornamental serifs. They demonstrate
the diversity of expanded and condensed widths
produced by nineteenth-century designers. The
bottom specimen is an Antique Tuscan with curved
and slightly pointed slab serifs. Note the care given
to the design of negative shapes
surrounding the letters. Various sizes
The third major
typographic innovation of the early
1800s, sansserif type, made its modest
debut in an 1816 specimen book issued by William Caslon IV (Fig. 9–16).
Buried among the decorative display fonts of capitals in the back of the
book, one line of medium-weight capitals without serifs proclaimed
 “W CASLON JUNR LETTER FOUNDER.” It closely resembled an
Egyptian face with the serifs removed, which is probably how Caslon IV
designed it.

9–16. William Caslon IV, two-line English Egyptian, 1816. This specimen quietly introduced sans-
serif type, which would become a major element in graphic design. Various sizes
Each designer and foundry attached a name: Caslon used Doric,
Thorowgood called his grotesques, Blake and Stephenson named their
version sans-surryphs, and in the United States, the Boston Type and
Stereotype Foundry named its first American sans-serif faces Gothics.
Perhaps the rich black color of these display types seemed similar to
the density of Gothic types. Vincent Figgins dubbed his 1832 specimen
sans serif (Fig. 9–17) in
recognition of the font’s
most apparent feature, and
the name stuck.
9–17. Vincent Figgins, two-line Great Primer
Sans-serif, 1832. Awkward black display fonts
in Figgins’s 1832 Specimens of Printing Types
launched both the name and wide use of
sans-serif
typography. Various sizes
 THE WOOD-TYPE POSTER
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
An American printer named Darius Wells (1800–75) began to
experiment with hand-carved wooden types and in 1827 invented a
lateral router that enabled the economical mass manufacture of wood
types for display printing.
 After William Leavenworth (1799–1860) combined the
pantograph with the router in 1834, new wood-type fonts could be
introduced so easily that customers were invited to send a drawing of
one letter of a new style; the manufactory offered to design and produce
an entire font based on the sketch without an additional charge for
design and pattern drafting.
 The impetus of this new display typography and the increasing
demand for public posters by clients ranging from traveling circuses
and vaudeville troupes to clothing stores and the new railroads led to
poster houses specializing in letterpress display material (Figs. 9–18
and 9–19). In the eighteenth century, job printing had been a sideline
of newspaper and book printers.
9–18. Handbill for an excursion train, 1876. To be
bolder than bold, the compositor used heavier
letterforms for the initial letter of important words.
Oversized terminal letterforms combine with
condensed and extended styles in the phrase Maryland
Day! 70 x 34 cm
9–19. Ship excursion letterpress poster, c. 1880–90.
27.3 x 36.8 cm
 The design of handbills, wood-type posters, and broadsheets at
the poster houses did not involve a graphic designer in the
twentiethcentury sense. The compositor, often in consultation with
the client, selected and composed the type, rules, ornaments, and
woodengraved or metal-stereotyped stock illustrations that filled the
type cases. The designer had access to a nearly infinite range of
typographic sizes, styles, weights, and novel ornamental effects, and
the prevailing design philosophy often encouraged an eclectic style.
The need to lock all the elements tightly on the press enforced a
horizontal and vertical stress on the design; this became the basic
organizing principle.
 Design decisions were pragmatic. Long words or copy dictated
condensed type, and short words or copy were set in expanded fonts.
Important words were given emphasis through the use of the largest
available type sizes. There was a practical side to the extensive mixing
of styles in job printing, because many fonts, each having a limited
number of characters, were available at the typical print shop. Wood
and metal types were used together freely.
The typographic poster houses that had developed with the
advent of wood type began to decline after 1870 as improvements in
lithographic printing resulted in more pictorial and colorful posters.
Also, the importance of traveling entertainment shows—a mainstay
among typographic poster house clients—declined.
 A REVOLUTION IN PRINTING
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Inevitably, the relentless progress of the Industrial Revolution
radically altered printing. Inventors applied mechanical theory and
metal parts to the handpress, increasing its efficiency and the size of
its impression.
 Nicolas-Louis Robert, a young clerk in the Didot paper mill in
France, developed a prototype for a papermaking machine in 1798,
but political turmoil in France prevented him from perfecting it.
In 1803 the first production paper machine was operative at
Frogmore, England. This machine, which was similar to Robert’s
prototype, poured a suspension of fiber and water in a thin stream
upon a vibrating wire-mesh conveyor belt on which an unending sheet
of paper could be manufactured.
THE MECHANIZATION OF TYPOGRAPHY
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
By the time Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854–99) perfected his
Linotype machine in 1886, about three hundred machines had been
patented in Europe and America, and several thousand patent claims
were on file. Many people, including the writer Mark Twain, invested
millions of dollars in the search for automatic typesetting.
 Mergenthaler’s brilliant breakthrough (Fig. 9–24) involved the
use of small brass matrixes with female impressions of the letterforms,
numbers, and symbols. Ninety typewriter keys controlled vertical
tubes that were filled with these matrixes. Each time the operator
pressed a key, a matrix for that character was released.
9–24. The Model 5 Linotype
became the workhorse of with
typesetting,
keyboards and matrixes available
in over a thousand languages.
 The Linotype led to a surge in the production of periodicals, and
illustrated weeklies, including the Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s,
reached audiences of millions by the turn of the century.
 PHOTOGRAPHY, THE NEW
COMMUNICATIONS TOOL
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
A camera obscura is a darkened room or box with a small
opening or lens in one side. Light rays passing through this aperture
are projected onto the opposite side and form a picture of the bright
objects outside. Artists have used a camera obscura as an aid to
drawing for centuries. Around 1665, a small, portable, boxlike camera
obscura was developed (Fig. 9–25).
9–25. As this nineteenth-century camera
obscura demonstrates, the optical principles
of photography were well understood and
used by artists to aid in drawing
 THE INVENTORS OF
PHOTOGRAPHY
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Joseph Niépce (1765–1833), the Frenchman who first produced
a photographic image, began his research by seeking an automatic
means of transferring drawings onto printing plates.
As a lithographic printer of popular religious images, Niépce
searched for a way to make plates other than by drawing.
 A theatrical performer and painter who had participated in the
invention of the diorama, Louis Jacques Daguerre (1799–1851),
contacted him. Daguerre had been conducting similar research, Niépce
warmed to him, and they shared ideas until Niépce died of a stroke in
1833.
Daguerre persevered, and on 7 January 1839 his perfected
process was presented to the French Academy of Sciences. The
members marveled at the clarity and minute detail of his
daguerreotype prints (Fig. 9–28) and the incredible accuracy of the
images.
 9–28. Louis Jacques Daguerre, Paris
boulevard, 1839. In this early
daguerreotype, the wagons, carriages,
and pedestrians were not recorded
because the slow exposure could only
record stationary objects. On the
lower left street corner, a man
stopped to have his boots polished.
He and the polisher were the first
people ever to be photographed

Daguerreotypes
had limitations, for each
plate was a one-of-akind
image of predetermined
size, and the process required meticulous polishing, sensitizing,
and development. The polished surface had a tendency to produce glare,
and unless it was viewed at just the right angle, the image had a curious
habit of reversing itself and appearing as a negative.
 Around the same time in England, William Henry Fox Talbot
(1800–77) pioneered a process that formed the basis for both
photography and photographic printing plates.
Talbot called these images, made without a camera, photogenic
drawings (Fig. 9–29); today we call images made by manipulating with
objects the light striking photographic paper photograms.
Twentiethcentury graphic designers often used the technique.
 9–29. William Henry Fox Talbot, cameraless
shadow picture of flowers, 1839. By sandwiching
the flowers between his photographic paper and a
sheet of glass and exposing the light-sensitive
emulsion to sunlight, Talbot invented the
photogram, later extensively used as a design tool
by designers such as László Moholy-Nagy.
Upon learning about the
research of Daguerre and
Talbot, the eminent
astronomer and chemist Sir
John Herschel (1792–1871)
tackled the problem of
photography. In addition to duplicating Talbot’s results, he was the first
to use sodium thiosulfate to fix or make permanent the image by
halting the action of light. On 1 February 1839 he shared this
knowledge with Talbot. Both Daguerre and Talbot adopted this means
of fixing the image.
During that month Talbot solved the problem of the reversed
image by contact printing his reverse image to another sheet of his
sensitized paper in sunlight. Herschel named the reversed image a
negative (Fig. 9–30) and called the contact a positive (Fig. 9–31). These
terms and Herschel’s later name for Talbot’s invention, photography
(from the Greek photos graphos, meaning “light drawing”), have been
adopted throughout the world.
 9–31. William Henry Fox Talbot, print from the first
photographic negative. The sun provided the light
source to contactprint the negative to another
sheet of sensitized paper, producing this positive
image of the sky and land outside the windows. 8.3
x 10.7 cm
In 1844 Talbot began
publishing his book, The Pencil of
Nature, in installments for
subscribers (Fig. 9–32); each copy
featured twentyfour
photographs mounted by hand.
Late in 1840 Talbot
managed to increase the light
 sensitivity of his paper, expose a latent image, then develop it after it
was removed from the camera. He called his new process calotype
(from the Greek kalos typos, meaning “beautiful impression”) and also
used the name talbotype at the suggestion of friends
The crystal clarity of daguerreotypes was superior to the
softness of calotype images.
9–32. Pages from Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature, 1844. The first book to be illustrated entirely with photographs, published in
fascicles from 1844 to 1846, The Pencil of Nature had original prints mounted onto the printed page. Plate VII is a photogram.
The use of modern-style type with ornate initials is typical of early Victorian book design. 20.3 x 15.2 cm
 An American dry-plate manufacturer, George Eastman (1854–
1932), put the power of photography into the hands of the lay public
when he introduced his Kodak camera (Fig. 9–33) in 1888. It was an
invention without precedent, for ordinary citizens now had the ability
to create images and keep a graphic record of their lives and
experiences.
9–33. Advertisement for the Kodak
camera, c. 1889. George Eastman’s
camera, simple enough for anyone
“who can wind a watch,” played a
major role in making photography
every person’s art form. 11.7 x
8.9 cm
 THE APPLICATION OF
PHOTOGRAPHY TO PRINTING
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Many individuals worked on the problem and contributed to the
evolution of this process. A major breakthrough occurred on 4 March
1880, when the New York Daily Graphic printed the first reproduction
of a photograph with a full tonal range in a newspaper (Figs. 9–37 and
9–38). Entitled “A Scene in Shantytown,” it was printed from a crude
halftone screen invented by Stephen H. Horgan.
 9–37 and 9–38. Stephen H.
Horgan, experimental
photoengraving, 1880. This, the
first halftone printing plate to
reproduce a photograph in a
newspaper, heralded the
potential of photography in
visual communications. 14 x
21.7 cm
Frederick E. Ives (1856–
1937) of Philadelphia
developed an early
halftone process and worked on the first commercial production of
halftone printing plates in 1881. The sum of all the minute dots
produced the illusion of continuous tones. Later Ives joined brothers
Max and Louis Levy to produce consistent commercial halftones using
etched glass screens.
 A ruling machine was used to inscribe parallel lines in an
acidresistant coating on optically clear glass. After acid was used to
etch the ruled lines into the glass, the indentations were filled with an
opaque material. Two sheets of this ruled glass were sandwiched,
face-to-face, with one set of lines running horizontally and another set
running vertically. The amount of light passing through each little
square formed by the lines determined how big each dot would be.
Halftone images could be made from these screens, and the era of
photographic reproduction had arrived.
 DEFINING THE MEDIUM
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
When Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79) received a camera and
the equipment for processing collodion wet plates as a forty-ninth
birthday present from her daughter and son-in-law, the accompanying
note said, “It may amuse you, Mother, to photograph.” From 1864
until 1874, this wife of a high British civil servant extended the artistic
potential of photography through portraiture that recorded “faithfully
the greatness of the inner man as well as the features of the outer
man” (Fig. 9–40).
9–40. Julia Margaret Cameron,
“Alfred Lord Tennyson,” 1866.
Moving beyond descriptive
imagery, Cameron’s compelling
psychological portraits revealed
her subjects’ inner being. 29.2 x
22.4 cm
 PHOTOGRAPHY AS REPORTAGE
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
During the war Brady invested a $100,000 fortune to send a score
of his photographic assistants, including Alexander Gardner (1821–82)
and Timothy H. O’Sullivan (c. 1840–82), to document the American Civil
War. From Brady’s photography wagons, called “Whatsits” by the
Union troops, a great national trauma was etched forever in the
collective memory. Brady’s photographic documentation had a profound
impact upon the public’s romantic ideal of war (Fig. 9–
43).
 9–43. Mathew Brady, “Dunker Church and the
Dead,” 1862. Made in the aftermath of the Battle
of Antietam, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War,
this photograph shows how visual
documentation took on a new level of supposed
authenticity with photography. Because of
technical limitations of the medium,
photographers such as Brady could only
photograph the results of battles, not the actual
fighting. This has led to speculation by scholars
that scenes captured by photographs were
“staged” or otherwise altered. For example,
scholars have suggested that the bodies of the
dead may have been moved to enhance the
effectiveness of the image. 17.3 x 14 cm
An adventurous photographer, Eadweard Muybridge (1830–
1904) lived in San Francisco and photographed Yosemite, Alaska, and
Central America. Leland Stanford, a former governor of California and
the president of the Central Pacific Railroad, commissioned Muybridge
to document his belief that a galloping horse lifted all four feet off the
ground simultaneously; a twenty-five-thousand-dollar wager rested on
the outcome.
The resulting sequence of photographs arrested the horse’s
movement in time and space, and Stanford, a breeder and racer of
trotters, won the bet (Fig. 9–46). The development of motion-picture
photography, the kinetic medium of changing light passing through a
series of still photographs joined together by the human eye through
the persistence of vision, was the logical extension of Muybridge’s
innovation.
 9–46. Eadweard Muybridge, plate published in The Horse in Motion, 1883. Sequence photography proved the ability of
graphic images to record time-and-space relationships. Moving images became a possibility. 49.5 x 61 cm

POPULAR GRAPHICS OF THE

VICTORIAN ERA
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
The reign of Victoria (1819–1901), who became queen of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1837, spanned
twothirds of the nineteenth century. The Victorian era was a time of
strong moral and religious beliefs, proper social conventions, and
optimism. “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world” was a
popular motto. The Victorians searched for a design spirit to express
their epoch. Aesthetic confusion led to a number of often
contradictory design approaches and philosophies mixed together in a
scattered fashion.
The English designer, author, and authority on color Owen Jones
(1809–74) became a major design influence at midcentury. During his
mid-twenties Jones traveled to Spain and the Near East and made a
systematic study of Islamic design. Jones introduced Moorish
ornament to Western design in his book Plans, Elevations, Sections,
and Details of the Alhambra (1842–45). His main influence was
through his widely studied 1856 book of large color plates, The
Grammar of Ornament. (Fig. 9–48). This catalog of design possibilities
from Eastern and Western cultures, “savage” tribes, and natural forms
became the nineteenth-century designer’s
bible of ornament.
9–48. Owen Jones, color plate from
The Grammar of
Ornament, 1856. This plate
shows patterns found in the
arts and crafts of India.
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF
LITHOGRAPHY
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Lithography was invented by Bavarian author Aloys Senefelder
(1771–1834) between 1796 and 1798. Senefelder was seeking a cheap
way to print his own dramatic works by experimenting with etched
stones and metal reliefs. He eventually arrived at the idea that a stone
could be etched away around grease-pencil writing and made into a
relief printing plate. Senefelder named his process lithography (from
the Greek lithos, “stone,” and graphein, “to write”).
 Lithography is based on the simple chemical principle that oil
and water do not mix. An image is drawn on a flat stone surface with
oil-based crayon, pen, or pencil. Water is spread over the stone to
moisten all areas except the oil-based image, which repels the water.
Then an oil-based ink is rolled over the stone, adhering to the image
but not to the wet areas of the stone. A sheet of paper is placed over
the image and a printing press is used to transfer the inked image onto
the paper.
Since the time of medieval block books, applying color to printed
images by hand had been a slow and costly process. German printers
spearheaded color lithography, and the French printer
Godefroy Engelmann (1788–1839) patented a process named
chromolithographie in 1837. After analyzing the colors contained within
the original image, the printer separated them into a series of printing
plates and printed these component colors, one by one.
THE BOSTON SCHOOL OF
CHROMOLITHOGRAPHY
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
The four decades from 1860 until 1900 were the heyday of
chromolithography.
 Victorian graphics found a most prolific innovator in Louis Prang
(1824–1909), a German immigrant to America whose work and influence
were international.
 In addition to art reproductions and Civil War maps and scenes,
Prang produced literally millions of album cards called scrap. Collecting
these “beautiful art bits” was a major Victorian pastime, and Prang’s
wildflowers, butterflies, children, animals, and birds became the ultimate
expression of the period’s love for sentimentalism, nostalgia, and
traditional values.
 He has been called the father of the American Christmas card
for his pioneering work in holiday graphics.
After producing Christmas images suitable for framing in the late
1860s, Prang published an English Christmas card in 1873 and
American Christmas cards the following year. Typical images included
Santa Claus, reindeer, and Christmas trees. A full line of designs
followed, and Easter, birthday, Valentine, and New Year’s Day cards
were produced annually by L. Prang and Company during the early
1880s (Fig. 9–53).
9–53. Louis Prang, Valentine card,
1883. Chromolithography. This
sentimental card is a good example
of the range of tone and color that
could be achieved with
chromolithography. 28 x 21.6 cm
 THE DESIGN LANGUAGE OF
CHROMOLITHOGRAPHY
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Labels and packages became important areas for
chromolithography (Fig. 9–60).
At midcentury, transfer-printing processes were developed.
Reversed images were printed onto thin paper and then transferred onto
sheet metal under great pressure. The paper backing was soaked off,
leaving printed images on the tin plate.
 9–60. Package designs chromolithographed on tin for food and tobacco products used bright flat
colors, elaborate lettering, and iconic images to create an emblematic presence for the product.

IMAGES FOR CHILDREN

MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
Before the Victorian era, Western countries had a tendency to
treat children as little adults. The Victorians developed a more tender
attitude, and this was expressed through the development of toy
books, colorful picture books for preschool children.
 Walter Crane (1845–1915) was one of the earliest and the most
influential designers of children’s picture books (Fig. 9–64).
Apprenticed as a wood engraver as a teenager, Crane was twenty years
old in 1865 when his Railroad Alphabet was published. A long series of
his toy books broke with the traditions of printed material for children.
Earlier graphics for children insisted on a didactic or moral purpose,
and always taught or preached to the young; Crane sought only to
entertain.
9–64. Walter
Crane, page from
Absurd ABC, 1874.
Animated figures
are placed against
a black
background; large
letterforms are
integrated with
the imagery. Crane
designed several
alphabet books,
each one unlike
the others. 26 x
22.2 cm
 He was one of the earliest Western graphic designers to be
significantly influenced by the Japanese woodblock. After acquiring
some Japanese prints from a British sailor in the late 1860s, Crane
drew inspiration from the flat color and flowing contours.
 As a bank clerk in his twenties, Randolph Caldecott (1846–86)
developed a passion for drawing and took evening lessons in painting,
sketching, and modeling. A steady stream of freelance assignments
encouraged him to move to London and turn professional at the age of
twenty-six. He possessed a unique sense of the absurd, and his ability
to exaggerate movement and facial expressions of both people and
animals brought his work to life.
Caldecott created a world where dishes and plates are
personified, cats make music, children are at the center of society, and
adults become servants. His humorous drawing style became a
prototype for children’s books and later for animated films (Fig. 9–65).
9–65. Randolph Caldecott,
illustration from Hey Diddle
Diddle, c. 1880. Oblivious to the
outlandish elopement,
Caldecott’s dancing dinnerware
moves to a driving musical
rhythm. 19.7 x 12.8 cm
 THE RISE OF AMERICAN EDITORIAL
AND ADVERTISING DESIGN
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
James (1795–1869) and John (1797–1875) Harper used modest
savings—and their father’s offer to mortgage the family farm if
necessary—to launch a New York printing firm in 1817. Their younger
brothers Wesley (1801–70) and Fletcher (1807–77) joined the firm in
1823 and 1825, respectively. Eighteen-year-old Fletcher Harper
became the firm’s editor when he became a partner, and the
company’s own publishing ventures grew dramatically over the
decades. By midcentury, Harper and Brothers had become the largest
printing and publishing firm in the world. In the role of senior editor
and manager of publishing activities, Fletcher Harper shaped graphic
communications in America for half a century.
With the rapid expansion of the reading public, and the
economies resulting from new technologies, publishers focused on large
press runs and modest prices.
 The firm opened the era of the pictorial magazine in 1850 when
the 144-page Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (Fig. 9–68) began
publication with serialized English fiction and numerous woodcut
illustrations created for each issue by the art staff. The monthly
magazine was joined by Harper’s Weekly, a periodical that functioned
as a newsmagazine, in 1857. Harper’s Bazar [sic] for women was
founded in 1867, and Harper’s Young People addressed the youth
audience in 1879.
9–68. Richard G. Tietze, poster for
Harper’s Magazine, 1883. An
impressionistic quality is achieved in an
illustration divided into three zones, with
the middle holly area providing a
background for the message while
separating the images. 41 x 28 cm
 Charles Parsons became the art editor of Harper and Brothers in
1863, and he helped raise the standard
of pictorial images in the company’s
publications. Parsons had a superb eye for
young talent, and one illustrator he brought
along was Charles Dana Gibson (1867–
1944), whose images of young women
(Fig. 9–70) and square-jawed men
established a canon of physical beauty in
the mass media that endured for decades.
9–70. Charles Dana Gibson, poster for
Scribner’s, 1895. Although the exquisite
beauty of the “Gibson Girls” was captured
 with facility and control, Gibson was unconcerned with the design of type and image
as a cohesive whole. In this poster the printer added text in incompatible typefaces.
47 x 31 c
Closely bound to the growth of magazines was the development
of advertising agencies. In 1841, Volney Palmer of Philadelphia
established the predecessor to the modern advertising agency. The
advertising agency as a consulting firm with an array of specialized skills
was pioneered by another Philadelphia advertising agent, N. W. Ayer and
Son.
In the 1880s Ayer provided services clients were not equipped to
perform and publishers did not offer, such as copywriting. By the end of
the century he was well on the way toward offering a complete
spectrum of services: copywriting, art direction, production, and media
selection.
Many of the conventions of persuasive selling were developed
during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Advertisements
from the English, American, and German periodicals of the period
demonstrate some of these techniques (Fig. 9–72).
9–72. Victorian advertisements, 1880–90. This potpourri ranges from small
typographic ads to full-page ads with dominant illustrations. Various sizes
 The design of these pages shows that Victorian advertising
pages were created with little concern for a total design. By the end of
the century, magazines, including Cosmopolitan and McClure’s, were
carrying over a hundred pages of advertisements in each monthly
issue. Frequently, an engraved illustration would have type set above
or below it, and often engravers adopted the prevalent practice of
chromolithography, superimposing lettering on top of a pictorial
image.
 VICTORIAN TYPOGRAPHY
MA 2 - HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
As the Victorian era progressed, the taste for ornate elaboration
became a major influence on typeface and lettering design. Early
nineteenth-century elaborated types were based on letterforms with
traditional structure. Shadows, outlines, and embellishments were
applied while retaining the classical letter structure. In the second half
of the century, advances in industrial technology permitted metal-type
foundries to push elaboration, including the fanciful distortion of basic
letterforms, to an extreme degree.