HistoryofDesign

Date	World Events	Design Periods	Design Events	Practitioners
BCE	Humans develop tools, language, religion Drawing first appears, 40,000 BCE Early grain farming, 11,000 BCE Sumer, 6500-1940 BCE Writing first appears, 3600 BCE	Cave Painting Sumarians created cuneiform — world's oldest writing system; early system of gods; early agriculture in Mediterranean. It is said that the first grain crops were grown, not for eating, but for making beer. The "Fertile Crescent" was known to be much fought over. If it was because they made great beer, what could be more obvious?	Earliest cave paintings, 40,000 BCE Sumarian cuneiform and Egyptian heiroglyphics begin to appear, 3500 BCE Sumarian cuneiform, left-to-right writing, 3100 BCE Egyptian ideographs appear, 3100 BCE First full sentence in Egyptian heiroglyphics, 2700 or 2600 BCE
Egyptian, 3100 BCE–30 BCE	Development of Egypt along the Nile, first major civilization Development of first alphabet (written symbols representing sounds instead of things and ideas) in Sinai, based on heiroglyphics, 1700 BCE Rise of Phoenicians — seafarers and traders from the coasts of Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Gaza, Syria and south west Turkey, 1500-300 BCE	Protodynastic Period, approx. 3100–3050 BCE Early Dynastic Period 3050–2681 BCE Old Kingdom, 2686–2181 BCE First Intermediate Period, 2181–1991 BCE Middle Kingdom, 2134–1690 BCE Second Intermediate Period, 1674–1549 BCE New Kingdom, 1549–1069 BCE Third Intermediate Period, 1069–653 BCE Late Period, 672–332 BCE Greek rule after conquered by Alexander the Great, 332-30 BCE Province of Roman Empire, 30 BCE–476 AD	Heiroglyphics continue to develop Giza pyramids, 2589–2504 BCE Chinese invent writing, Jia-gu wen (Oracle Bone), 1900-1300 BCE² First metal punches, 1800 BCE A clay tablet, the Hymn to Ninkasi (the Sumerian Goddess of Brewing), contains an ancient recipe for making beer, 1800 BCE Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, 1700 BCE King Tut entombment, ca. 1323 BCE Phoenicians adopt alphabet, spread through trade, 1000-300 BCE Monumental sculpture Tombs Mummification of dead Egyptians create first "advertising" on papyrus
Ancient Greece, 750 BCE–146 BCE	With their adoption of writing after 900 BCE, Greeks — including Socrates (470-399 BCE), Plato (428-348 BCE) and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) — "invent" new ways of thinking, including logic, categorization, analysis, concept of beginning, middle and end.³ Birth of Buddha, 563 BCE Confucius, 551–479 BCE The Acedemy in Athens, founded by Plato, 387-83 BCE	Archaic Period, c.650-500 BCE Classical Period, c.500-323 BCE Hellenistic Period, c.323-27 BCE	Cascajal block, earliest writing in Mesoamerica(?), 900BCE Greek alphabet, including 5 vowels, written "as the ox plows," no spaces or punctuation, 900 BCE Illiad and Oddysey, Homer, 760–710 BCE Archaic Period, Greek sculptors start to develop monumental marble sculpture, c.650-500 BCE Classical Period, the creative highpoint of Greek sculpture, c.500-323 BCE Tempra painting, using pigments suspended in water or egg, 500 BCE Hellenistic Period, the "Greek" style of sculpture is practiced across the Eastern Mediterranean, c.323-27 BCE (Ancient Greek sculptures were in bronze; the Romans copied them in marble then melted the originals for use in weapons.) Kahn Academy has a history of Greek art.	Polykleitos, sculptor, 400s BCE Iktinos and Kallikrates design Parthenon Pheidias, sculptor for Acropolis, 480-430 BCE Ictinus and Callicrates, architects of Acropolis Skopas, sculptor, 395-350 BCE Praxiteles, sculptor, 370-330 BCE Lysippos, sculptor, 370-300 BCE
Ancient Rome, 509 BCE–476 AD	Rome unites known world, 31 BCE Catholic Church, 110 AD–present Emperor Constantine declares Christianity as the official faith and moves capital from Rome to Constantinople, splitting empire, 310 AD	Roman Kingdom, 753 BCE–510 BCE Roman Republic, 510 BCE–31 BCE Roman Empire, 31 BCE–476 AD	Roman alphabet, additional letters and vowels plus spaces and punctuation, 600 BCE King Eumenes II of Pergamum, Turkey, creates parchment, made from the treated skins of animals, in response to Egyptian trade blockade of papyrus Rosetta Stone, 196 BCE, rediscovered 1799 AD (giving us the key to translating heiroglyphics) Ts'ai Lun invents paper, China, 105 AD Trajan's Column, Apollodorus of Damascus, 113 AD Wood block printing, China, 200 AD Invention of the book, as opposed to the scroll, made it much faster to access information, 400AD	Publius Aelius Fortunatus Arellius Gaius Fabius Pictor Malibu Painter Quintus Pedius Spurius Tadius Pacuvius
Medieval, 476 AD–1400s	Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor in the west, removed from power by Odovacar, leader of the Goths, AD 476 Birth of Islam, 610 First university since Greece, University of Bologna, 1088 "Renaissance of the 12th century": Crusades (1096-1400s) brings Europeans into contact with Muslims, allowing a revival of Roman and Greek natural science, philosophy and mathematics, results in high gothic cathedrals and founding of universities, 1100s Roger Bacon describes the first modern magnifying glass, c. 1214-1294 Black Death hits Europe, 1348–1350; kills as much as 1/2 of population	Early Medieval, before 1150 High Medieval, 1150-1300 Late Medieval, 1300-1400 Byzantine Islamic Celtic Carolingian Renaissance Romanesque Gothic	Emperor Charlemagne orders creation of Carolingian Miniscule, the first lower case letters, 732 AD Arabs learn papermaking from Chinese prisoners, 751 AD Earliest printed manuscript, Diamond Sutra, 868 AD Pi Sheng invents ceramic moveable type, China, 1040 AD Notre Dame Cathedral, 1163–1240 (Cathedrals are a form of writing) Metal-based movable type printing press invented in Korea, 1234 Stella Artois logo, 1366 Jikji, oldest extant movable metal print book, published in Heungdeok Temple, Korea, 1377 Look at Wikipedia's Medieval Art, specifically "Insular Art."	Medieval Artists Donatello Giotto di Bondone Leon Battista Alberti Cimabue Filippo Brunelleschi Fra Angelico Lorenzo Ghiberti Hildegard of Bingen Ravensburger Schutzmantelmadonna, Michel Erhart, 1480 Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, 1386
Renaissance, 1400s–1600s	Renaissance, beginning in Italy and fueled by trade and the printing press, revives greek and Roman history and literature, 1300-1600 City of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire falls to the Ottoman Turks, 1453, cutting land trade routes to China Cut off from China, Europeans discover the Americas, 1492; beginning of Columbian Exchange Martin Luther and others start the Protestant Reformation — the Bible is the ultimate authority and that man can read it directly without interpretation of priests. Made possible by the availability of inexpensive printing, this breaks monopoly of Catholic Church. 1517 (The Ninty-Five Theses by Martin Luther)-1648 (Treaty of Westphalia)	Renaissance, 1430-1550 Mannerism, 1527-1580	Niccolo de Niccoli, 1364–1437, invents italic script Poggio Bracciolini, 1380–1459, invents handwriting later adopted by Jenson Oil painting spreads due to improvement in materials, 1400s Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 1412-1416 First printing using engraving, 1430s Guttenberg perfects printing press, 1439; prints Guttenberg Bible, first mass produced printed work, 1450-1456 When the German printing capital, Mainz, was sacked in 1462, many printers fled to new locations, most to Italy. Nicholas Jenson cuts the first Italianate (oldstyle) font, 1470 Aldus Manutius creates first "pocket" book, Francesco Griffo cuts first italic font, 1500 Claude Garamond (né Garamont) cuts Grecs du roi, 1541; first to sell type fonts to other printers Robert Granjon cuts Civilité, 1557; its italic is later adopted as the italic for Garamond	William Shakespeare (1564-1616 Elizabethan playwright) Renaissance Artists Donatello (1386-1466) Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519) Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) Michaelangelo (1475-1564) Raphael (1483-1520) Titian (1485/90-1576) Mannerist Artists Tintoretto (1518-1594) El Greco (1541-1614)
Discovery, Invention, Revolution, 1600s–1799	Use of optics (microscopes, telescopes, and camera obscuras) changes how artists record the world, including hyper-realism Late 1600s and the early 1700s, cotton cloth woven in India displaces linen and wool. At first banned in England to protect their wool and flax industries, cotton becomes main good of English trade. Spinnning Jenny developed by James Hargreaves, 1765. Beginning of Industrial Era, where work was multiplied and machines replaced human and animal power. First practical steam engine, James Watt, 1775 American Revolution, 1776 French Revolution, 1789 Napoleon Bonaparte stages coup'd'etat in France, 1799, goes on to conquer much of Europe	Baroque, 1600-1750 Rococo, 1720s?-1785 Neoclassical, 1750-1850 Romanticism, 1780-1850	Pantograph invented, 1603, Christoph Scheiner, allows reproductions to be created at any size Antoni van Leeuwenhoek discovers microscopic life, 1674 Johannes Vermeer uses camera obscura to paint like life, 1660–1675 William Caslon cuts Caslon, first transitional font, 1716-1728 John Baskerville, a former teacher of calligraphy and wealthy industrialist seeking to improve printing quality, designs transitional font Baskerville, 1750s. Giambattista Bodoni cuts Bodoni, first modern font, 1790s German author and actor Alois Senefelder invents stone lithography, 1796	Baroque Artists Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669 Dutch Golden Age) Peter Paul Rubens Caravaggio Bernini Rococo Artists Jean-Antoine Watteau Jean-Honoré Fragonard Neoclassical Artists Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Jacques-Louis David Jean-Auguste_Dominique Ingres Jacques-Louis David Romantic Artists Johann Strauss II Frédéric Chopin Richard Wagner Franz Liszt Johannes Brahms J. M. W. Turner Eugène Delacroix (See Liberty Leading the People) Francisco Goya
1810-1820	Napoleon Bonaparte defeated at Waterloo, 1815 Napoleon dies in exile, 1821 Erie Canal opens, 1825 B&O Railroad chartered 1827 Beginning of inexpensive mass transportation		First "fatface" (Bodoni on steroids), Robert Thorne, 1803 First cylinder printing press, 1100 pages an hour, 1812 Vincent Figgins cuts first slab serif fonts, 1815-1817 Steel pen developed 1820; contributed to the rise of Spencerian Script and advanced calligraphy in the 1800s. Earliest photograph, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1826 or 1827 Noah Webster publishes first American dictionary, 1828 First typewriter patented by William August Burt, Detroit, 1829
1830	Queen Victoria begins her reign, 1837	Victorian era Horror Vacui (Fear of Empty Spaces; term for cluttered home decoration style resulting from the inexpensiveness of household objects caused by industrialization)	Godefroy Engelmann is awarded a patent on chromolithography, 1837 (first full-color printing) The Daguerre-Niépce method of photography is presented to the Academy of Science, Paris, 1839	Currier & Ives, lithographers (1834-1907)
1840	B&O Railroad reaches coal fields of West Virginia, 1842; beginning of inexpensive energy S.F.B. Morse’s telegraph is used for the first time between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., the first quick communication, 1844. Values short, accurate communication; promotes cryptography	Pre-Raphaelites Realism, 1848-1900	First fax machine, 1842 First painted Christmas card designed and produced by John C. Horseley, 1843 Richard March Hoe builds the first rotary printing press (using a round printing plate), 1843 Wood-pulp paper invented by Friedrich Gottlob Keller, 1844 Robert Besley cuts Clarendon, 1845	Realist Artists Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Gustave Courbet Honoré Daumier Jean-François Millet
1850	Petroleum distilled by Benjamin Silliman, 1855 Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of the Species, 1859 John Brown killed in raid on Harpers Ferry, 1859	William Morris begins the Arts & Crafts Movement, his reaction to Victorian over-decoration at the Great Exhibition	Joseph Paxton builds the Crystal Palace in London for the Great Exhibition, the "first" international exhibition, 1851 David E. Hughes invents printing telegraph, 1855
1860	U.S. Civil War and resulting industrialization boom Louis Pasteur discovers germs and invents a process for sterilizing liquids	Impressionism, 1865-1885 Matthew Brady et al. invent photojournalism on the battlefields of the Civil War	Paris World’s Fair introduces Japanese art to the West, 1867 First postcard, Austria, 1869	David Stemple, typefounder Impressionist Artists Marie Cassatt Edgar Degas Claude Debussy Édouard Manet Claude Monet Pierre-Auguste Renoir
1870	Joseph Lister develops aseptic surgical techniques Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, 1876. Telephone becomes fastest growing information system because it doesn't require specialized knowledge and saves time. Unintended consequence is explosive industrial growth (like China after cell phone). Thomas Edison patents the phonograph, 1877 Thomas Edison invents the first practical electric light, 1879		First Impressionist exhibition, 1874 Robert Barclay invents first offset press (prints to drum which then prints to paper), 1875 Bass Ale red triangle, first trademarked logo, 1876 Eadweard Muybridge photographs sequences of animal motion using still cameras, 1877-1886 Karel Klíč invents photogravure, which allows accurate reproduction of photographs, 1878
1880	First skyscraper (10 stories), first building with steel skeleton, is built in Chicago, 1884-5; Major William LeBaron Jenney, architect First gasoline automobile, Carl Benz, 1885-1886 A. G. Eiffel completes the tallest building in the world, the Eiffel Tower, for the French Exposition Universelle, 1889	Century Guild Arts & Crafts Movement, 1880-1910 Post Impressionism, 1885-1910	New York Daily Graphic printed the first reproduction of a photograph with a full tonal range in a newspaper using a halftone screen invented by Stephen Horgan. 1880 Ottmar Mergenthaler invents the Linotype, an automatic composing machine, Baltimore, 1886 Monotype foundry founded, 1887 George Eastman perfects his Kodak box camera, 1888	Auguste Rodin, "The Gate of Hell," 1880-1917 John Singer Sargent Arts & Crafts Movement Artists Rene Macintosh Arthur Mackmurdo William Morris Post-Impressionist Artists Paul Cézanne Paul Gauguin Georges Seurat Vincent Van Gogh
1890	Financiers in New York buy most large American businesses and create trusts (monopolies) Sigmund Freud begins developing psychoanalysis Henry Ford builds his first automobile, 1892	Art Nouveau Jungenstil Secession Glasgow School Vienna Session Beggerstaffs	La Goulue, Toulouse-Lautrec’s first poster for the Moulin Rouge, 1891 First movie camera and projector, William Dickson under Thomas Edison, 1892 First modern airbrush, Thayer and Chandler, 1893 First public film show, in Paris at the Hotel Scribe, 1895 Berthold Type Foundry releases Accidenz-Grotesk, 1896 Ubu Roi, first Dada play, Alfred Jarre, 1896 The Yellow Kid, the first American comic strip, illustrated by Rudolph Dirks, 1897	Art Nouveau Artists Antoni Gaudí René Lalique Charles Rennie Mackintosh Alphonse Mucha Louis C. Tiffany
1900 Modern Era	President Teddy Roosevelt works to break up monopolies, creates the National Park system Social Revolutionary Party founded, 1901 First airplane flight, Wright brothers, 1903	Fauvism and Expressionism, 1900-1935 Ashcan School, 1900-1920 Weiner Werkstatte Cubism Futurism Plakatstil	Priester Match poster, Lucian Bernhard, 1906 First Cubist exhibition in Paris, 1907 Paul Behrens designs the first steel and glass building for A.E.G. Factory in Berlin, 1908 Frank Loyd Wright builds Unity Temple, first modernist building in America, 1909	Morris Fuller Benton Frederic W. Goudy Pablo Piccaso Henri van de Velde Henri Matisse Wassily Kandinski
1910	First public radio broadcast, Dr. Lee De Forest, 1910 Ford develops assembly line, 1913 World War I, 16 million dead and 20 million wounded, 1914-1918 Albert Einstein publishes theory of relativity, 1916 Russian Revolution, 1917	Vorticism Dada Russian Constructivism German Expressionism DeStijl Bauhaus, German art school, embraces industrialism, "less is more," 1919-1933 (True Type of the Bauhaus)	First photosensitive silkscreen emulsion, early 1910s Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel Duchamp, 1912 Armory Show introduces Modernism to New York, 1913 Rite of Spring; Igor Stravinski, Vaslav Nijinsky and Ballets Rousses, 1913 “Underground” font designed by Edward Johnston, 1916. First "geometric" sans-serif font.("A Typeface for the Underground", London Reconnections, 2009) First jazz record, Original Dixieland Jazz Band, 1917 Fountain, Marcel Duchamp, 1917	Dada Artists George Grosz Hannah Höch Man Ray Russian Constructivist Artists El Lissitzky Alexander Rodchenko
1920	“Roaring Twenties,” Prohibition and mobsters Women get vote in U.S., 1920 Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrates the first television image, 1925 Wall Street crash, 1929	Art Deco Surrealism	Cabinet of Dr. Caligeri, Robert Wiene, 1921 Marcel Breuer, Wassily chair, 1925 "Battleship Potempkin," Sergie Eisenstein, 1925; propaganda film introduces film editing and montage to cinema. Futura font, classic geometric sans serif font, Paul Renner, 1927 Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927 Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, first full-length talking picture, 1927 Kodak develops 16mm color film, 1929 un chien andalou, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, 1929, first surrealist film.	Eric Gill J. C. Leyendecker Russian Constructivist Artists Sergei Eisenstein Stenberg Brothers Surrealist Artists Max Ernst Magritte Freda Kahlo Bauhaus Teachers and Students Walter Gropius Josef Albers Herbert Bayer Marcel Breuer Johannes Itten Wassily Kandinsky Paul Klee
1930	Great Depression, rise of dictators world-wide Spanish Civil War, 1936 New York World’s Fair, 1939 WWII starts, 1939	Moderne New Typography Socialist-Realist/Heroic Realism Streamline WPA	European designers flee Europe for the U.S. Dubo, Dubon, Dubonet poster, AM Cassandre, 1932 35mm Leica II rangefinder introduced, 1932 35mm Kodachrome introduced, first widely-available color film, 1935 Henry Luce begins publication of Life, first picture magazine, 1936 Paul Rand starts art directing Esquire magazine, 1936. He continues as art director until 1941. Picasso paints Guernica, 1937 László Moholy-Nagy founds the American New Bauhaus, Chicago, 1939	Alexey Brodovitch Charles T. Coiner Abram Games Raymond Loewy Herbert Matter Stanley Morrison Paul Rand Jan Tschichold
1940	Alan Turing cracks Enigma code with a "computer," 1942 First modern computer developed in U.S., 1944 World War II ends, 60 million dead, 1945 Atomic bomb, 1945 Claude Shannon creates Information Theory at Bell Labs, 1945 Transistor invented by Bell Labs, 1948	American Modern Atomic Age design Abstract Expressioniam, 1940s-1950s	Citizen Kane, Orson Wells, 1941 Paul Rand becomes art director at William H. Weintraub Advertising Agency with copywriter Bill Bernbach, 1941. Clients include Dubonnet, Ohrbach's Department Store, and Olivetti. He continues there until 1955. Graphis magazine published, Switzerland, 1944 Farnsworth House, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1945-1951 Lou Dorfsman hired by CBS Radio, 1946 Bill Bernbach joins James Edwin Doyle and Maxwell Dane to found Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), 1949.	Alvin Lustig Walter Landor Cipe Pinellies
1950	Europe rebuilds following World War II Cold War, 1945-1989 Korean War, 1950 Color Television, 1950 Sidney Rosenthal’s Magic Marker®, 1953 First phototypesetting, 1953 Elvis Presley has first rock ‘n’ roll hit, 1956 First daylight (DayGlo) fluorescent pigments, 1957 (first used in "Tide" packaging, 1959) First photocopier, Xerox, 1959 Civil Rights Movement	Swiss International Style Polish poster style Revivalism and Eclecticism (Push Pin Graphics) Googie Film Noiré	CBS “eye” logo created by CD Bill Golden, 1951 International Design Conference in Aspen (became Aspen Design Conference), 1951 Saul Bass designs poster and movie titles for film Carmen Jones, 1954 Push Pin Studios founded by Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Reynold Ruffins and Edward Sorel, 1954 Reid Miles designs album covers for Blue Note Records, 1955 Paul Rand designs trademark for IBM, 1956 Helvetica designed by Max Miedinger and Edouard Hoffmann, 1957 Seagram building, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1959 Volkswagen "Think Small" campaign, Helmut Krone and Julian Koenig, Doyle Dane Bernbach, 1959	Charles & Ray Eames Robert Frank Georg Olden Irving Penn Bradbury Thompson Henry Wolf
1960	Vietnam War U.S. scientists develop the laser, 1960 J. C. R. Licklider, in paper Man-Computer Symbiosis, proposes universal computer networking, 1960 First industrial robot on line at G.M., 1962 President John Kennedy assassinated, 1963 First phototypesetting on CRT screen, mid-1960s "Summer of Love" and Woodstock, 1967 Martin Luther King assassinated, 1968 Apollo 11, First manned moon landing, 1969 First message over ARPANET, the technical core of what would become the Internet, 1969 Compuserve, first commercial online computer service provider, 1969	Pop Art Op Art Psychedelia Fluxus Manifesto (Neo-Dada), 1963, by George Maciunas	Josef Müller-Brockmann’s Grid Systems in Graphic Design, 1961 Andy Warhol, 100 Soup Cans, 1962 George Lois directs Esquire magazine covers, 1962-1972 Massimo Vignelli founds NY branch of Unimark International, 1966 Wes Wilson designs psychedelic posters for the Filmore West, 1967 Herb Lubalin art directs magazine Avante Garde, 1968	Robert Brownjohn Paul Davis, illustrator Alan Fletcher (Fletcher/Forbes/Gill) Colin Forbes Bob Gill Armin Hofmann Tomoko Miho
1970	First email, Ray Tomlinson, 1971 Vietnam war ends, 1973 Exxon Quip, first practical fax machine (one page takes 6 minutes), mid-1970s Richard Dawkins coins the meme "meme" — ideas that replicate themselves, 1976 Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin sign the Camp David peace accords, 1978 First test-tube baby, 1978 First personal computers hit the market	Basel Graffiti Disco Punk, 1977-1983 New Wave Hip-hop and Rap	Paula Scher hired by CBS Records, 1972 First successful video game, Pong, released, 1972 Denise Scott Brown, Learning from Las Vegas, MIT Press, 1972 Nasir Ahmed develops Descrete Cosine Transform (DCT), a lossy compression algorithm that directly resulted in JPEG and MPEG image and video compression, and a varient, integer DCT, resulted in video compressions H.264, WebP and WebM. First punk album, Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bullocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, 1977 First New Wave album, Talking Heads, Talking Heads ’77, 1977 First laser printer, $500,000, Xerox, 1978	Ruth Ansel Jacqueline Casey, MIT Chermayeff & Geismar April Greiman Paula Scher Wolfgang Weingart
1980	Development of the Internet, 1980s Space shuttle flights begin, 1980 First emoticon, Scott Fahlman, 1982 (see also Kaomoji) Glastnost policy implemented by Russian Communist Party Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev, 1987 Berlin Wall torn down, 1989 First enlarging-reducing copiers, c. 1984 (end of Lucigraph, concept developed in Renaissance)	Postmodernism Performance Art Grunge Gangsta Rap	MTV, all-music video cable channel, 1981 Memphis Group founded in Milan by Ettore Sottsass, 1981 Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, 1983 Adobe releases Postscript language, 1984 Apple releases Macintosh, 1984 Emigré magazine begins publication, 1984 Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building, 1984 Apple laser printer, $7,000, 1985 Aldus Pagemaker (first page layout program), 1985 Fontographer developed by Altsys, 1986 Illustrator developed by Adobe, 1987 QuarkXPress developed by Quark, 1987 Photoshop invented by Thomas Knoll (originally for Industrial Light & Magic to automate masking for "Star Wars" special effects), 1988 David Carson, art director, Beach Culture magazine, 1989 Tim Berners-Lee invents the Web, URLs, HTTP and HTML at CERN, 1989	Charles Anderson Neville Brody David Carson Duffy Design Fallon, McElligott & Rice, first major regional agency Steven Heller, writer and designer Tibor Kalman (M&Co.), print and product designer and social activist Zuzana Leko, Emigre magazine Clement Mok
1990	Hubble telescope launched, 1990 Alan Emtage codes Archie, first search engine, 1990 1st Persian Gulf War, 1990-1991 End of Cold War, 1992 Indigo, first digital printing press, 1993 The Global Network Navigator (GNN), first commercial website, 1993 Pixar’s Toy Story, first full-length digitally animated film, 1995 First commercial text message, Sprint, 1995. Poor keyboards encourages widespread use of logograms (lol, etc.) Y2K — Widespread fear all computers will fail at turn of the century	Death of typesetting, 1990-1994 Web Design	Tim Berners-Lee writes the first web client and server, 1990 Mosaic, the first Web browser, is developed, 1993 After Effects, 1993 Adobe introduces PDF format, 1993 House Industries releases grunge fonts, 1994 JavaScript language developed, 1995 First portable digital camera, Minolta, 1995 CSS released, allows more complex websites, 1996 Matthew Carter designs Georgia and Verdana, Microsoft, 1996 FutureSplash Animator, which becomes Flash, 1996 Jonathan Ive designs first iMac, 1997 Adobe releases InDesign, 1999	Michael Bierut, designer and gadfly Matthew Carter, Typographer Lee Clow, Art Director Joshua Davis Kit Hinricks Michael Mabry Stefan Sagmeister Rick Valicenti Michael Vanderbyl
2000	2000; Al Gore loses election to George Bush by hanging chad ("Disenfranchised by Bad Design," Propublica) 9/11/2001; Afghanistan, Iraq Wars Great Recession, 2007-9 iPod, 2001; iPhone, 2007; iPhone with video 2009 Barak Obama, first black U.S. president, 2009	Web 2.0 Demise of many newspapers and magazines	With “Web 2.0,” websites become interactive Processing, software for generating art, MIT, 2001 Wordpress released, 2003 You-Tube, video on the web, 2005 jQuery, a library allowing easier coding of JavaScript, 2005 Etsy launched, allows designers to market directly, 2005 iPhone rejects Flash, signaling end of program, 2007	Marian Bantjes, lettering, ornate design Irma Boom, book design Kyle Cooper, video titles Crispin Porter Bogusky, Mini Cooper ad campaign Shepard Fairey, Obama "Hope" poster Louise Fili, lettering and package design Chip Kidd, book designer Debbie Millman, writer, educator, designer Eddie Opara, Pentagram partner
2010	Arab Spring, 2010-2011 Protests of police shootings in U.S., "Black Lives Matter," 2015 Cyber security issues become commmonplace Donald Trump elected president of U.S., 2016 Natural disasters: Deepwater Horizon oil spill covers Caribbean; earthquakes, tsunamis and "1000-year" weather	Hand-lettered type Google ranks mobile-accessible websites, 2015	Google Fonts released, allowing better type design on the Web, 2010 Instagram, online portfolio social media, 2010 Gap repeals logo redesign following extensive online backlash, 2010 HTML5, CSS3 released, improving interaction and animation, 2011 Adobe Creative Cloud, no individual licensing of software, all designers have all programs, 2013 Zoom allows remote living, 2013 "Mobile-ready" web design required, 2015 Sketch and other free and cheap apps vie to overtake Adobe, 2016– https required for Google searches, 2017	Tad Carpenter, illustrator/designer Arem Duplessis, creative director, New York Times Magazine Jessica Hische, letterer
2020	covid-18, 2021–2022 — everybody learns to stay home		Procreate for iPad Pro competes with Wacom Cinque Glyphs, other font programs cause explosion in font creation Zoom, online conferencing program, makes it possible to easily coduct meetings and classes online Postscript Type 1 fonts phased out, 2023	Jessica Walsh, SagmeisterWalsh Jason Santa Maria (A List Apart, Slate) Mike Perry, mikeperrystudio.com Some other designers

Date

World Events

Design Periods

Design Events

Practitioners

BCE

Humans develop tools, language, religion

Drawing first appears, 40,000 BCE

Early grain farming, 11,000 BCE

Sumer, 6500-1940 BCE

Writing first appears, 3600 BCE

Cave Painting

Sumarians created cuneiform — world's oldest writing system; early system of gods; early agriculture in Mediterranean. It is said that the first grain crops were grown, not for eating, but for making beer. The "Fertile Crescent" was known to be much fought over. If it was because they made great beer, what could be more obvious?

Earliest cave paintings, 40,000 BCE

Sumarian cuneiform and Egyptian heiroglyphics begin to appear, 3500 BCE

Sumarian cuneiform, left-to-right writing, 3100 BCE

Egyptian ideographs appear, 3100 BCE

First full sentence in Egyptian heiroglyphics, 2700 or 2600 BCE

Egyptian, 3100 BCE–30 BCE

Development of Egypt along the Nile, first major civilization

Development of first alphabet (written symbols representing sounds instead of things and ideas) in Sinai, based on heiroglyphics, 1700 BCE

Rise of Phoenicians — seafarers and traders from the coasts of Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Gaza, Syria and south west Turkey, 1500-300 BCE

Protodynastic Period, approx. 3100–3050 BCE

Early Dynastic Period 3050–2681 BCE

Old Kingdom, 2686–2181 BCE

First Intermediate Period, 2181–1991 BCE

Middle Kingdom, 2134–1690 BCE

Second Intermediate Period, 1674–1549 BCE

New Kingdom, 1549–1069 BCE

Third Intermediate Period, 1069–653 BCE

Late Period, 672–332 BCE

Greek rule after conquered by Alexander the Great, 332-30 BCE

Province of Roman Empire, 30 BCE–476 AD

Heiroglyphics continue to develop

Giza pyramids, 2589–2504 BCE

Chinese invent writing, Jia-gu wen (Oracle Bone), 1900-1300 BCE²

First metal punches, 1800 BCE

A clay tablet, the Hymn to Ninkasi (the Sumerian Goddess of Brewing), contains an ancient recipe for making beer, 1800 BCE

Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, 1700 BCE

King Tut entombment, ca. 1323 BCE

Phoenicians adopt alphabet, spread through trade, 1000-300 BCE

Monumental sculpture

Tombs

Mummification of dead

Egyptians create first "advertising" on papyrus

Ancient Greece, 750 BCE–146 BCE

With their adoption of writing after 900 BCE, Greeks — including Socrates (470-399 BCE), Plato (428-348 BCE) and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) — "invent" new ways of thinking, including logic, categorization, analysis, concept of beginning, middle and end.³

Birth of Buddha, 563 BCE

Confucius, 551–479 BCE

The Acedemy in Athens, founded by Plato, 387-83 BCE

Archaic Period, c.650-500 BCE

Classical Period, c.500-323 BCE

Hellenistic Period, c.323-27 BCE

Cascajal block, earliest writing in Mesoamerica(?), 900BCE

Greek alphabet, including 5 vowels, written "as the ox plows," no spaces or punctuation, 900 BCE

Illiad and Oddysey, Homer, 760–710 BCE

Archaic Period, Greek sculptors start to develop monumental marble sculpture, c.650-500 BCE

Classical Period, the creative highpoint of Greek sculpture, c.500-323 BCE

Tempra painting, using pigments suspended in water or egg, 500 BCE

Hellenistic Period, the "Greek" style of sculpture is practiced across the Eastern Mediterranean, c.323-27 BCE

(Ancient Greek sculptures were in bronze; the Romans copied them in marble then melted the originals for use in weapons.)

Kahn Academy has a history of Greek art.

Polykleitos, sculptor, 400s BCE

Iktinos and Kallikrates design Parthenon

Pheidias, sculptor for Acropolis, 480-430 BCE

Ictinus and Callicrates, architects of Acropolis

Skopas, sculptor, 395-350 BCE

Praxiteles, sculptor, 370-330 BCE

Lysippos, sculptor, 370-300 BCE

Ancient Rome, 509 BCE–476 AD

Rome unites known world, 31 BCE

Catholic Church, 110 AD–present

Emperor Constantine declares Christianity as the official faith and moves capital from Rome to Constantinople, splitting empire, 310 AD

Roman Kingdom, 753 BCE–510 BCE

Roman Republic, 510 BCE–31 BCE

Roman Empire, 31 BCE–476 AD

Roman alphabet, additional letters and vowels plus spaces and punctuation, 600 BCE

King Eumenes II of Pergamum, Turkey, creates parchment, made from the treated skins of animals, in response to Egyptian trade blockade of papyrus

Rosetta Stone, 196 BCE, rediscovered 1799 AD (giving us the key to translating heiroglyphics)

Ts'ai Lun invents paper, China, 105 AD

Trajan's Column, Apollodorus of Damascus, 113 AD

Wood block printing, China, 200 AD

Invention of the book, as opposed to the scroll, made it much faster to access information, 400AD

Publius Aelius Fortunatus

Arellius

Gaius Fabius Pictor

Malibu Painter

Quintus Pedius

Spurius Tadius

Pacuvius

Medieval, 476 AD–1400s

Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor in the west, removed from power by Odovacar, leader of the Goths, AD 476

Birth of Islam, 610

First university since Greece, University of Bologna, 1088

"Renaissance of the 12th century": Crusades (1096-1400s) brings Europeans into contact with Muslims, allowing a revival of Roman and Greek natural science, philosophy and mathematics, results in high gothic cathedrals and founding of universities, 1100s

Roger Bacon describes the first modern magnifying glass, c. 1214-1294

Black Death hits Europe, 1348–1350; kills as much as 1/2 of population

Early Medieval, before 1150

High Medieval, 1150-1300

Late Medieval, 1300-1400

Byzantine

Islamic

Celtic

Carolingian Renaissance

Romanesque

Gothic

Emperor Charlemagne orders creation of Carolingian Miniscule, the first lower case letters, 732 AD

Arabs learn papermaking from Chinese prisoners, 751 AD

Earliest printed manuscript, Diamond Sutra, 868 AD

Pi Sheng invents ceramic moveable type, China, 1040 AD

Notre Dame Cathedral, 1163–1240 (Cathedrals are a form of writing)

Metal-based movable type printing press invented in Korea, 1234

Stella Artois logo, 1366

Jikji, oldest extant movable metal print book, published in Heungdeok Temple, Korea, 1377

Look at Wikipedia's Medieval Art, specifically "Insular Art."

Medieval Artists

Donatello

Giotto di Bondone

Leon Battista Alberti

Cimabue

Filippo Brunelleschi

Fra Angelico

Lorenzo Ghiberti

Hildegard of Bingen

Ravensburger Schutzmantelmadonna, Michel Erhart, 1480

Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, 1386

Renaissance, 1400s–1600s

Renaissance, beginning in Italy and fueled by trade and the printing press, revives greek and Roman history and literature, 1300-1600

City of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire falls to the Ottoman Turks, 1453, cutting land trade routes to China

Cut off from China, Europeans discover the Americas, 1492; beginning of Columbian Exchange

Martin Luther and others start the Protestant Reformation — the Bible is the ultimate authority and that man can read it directly without interpretation of priests. Made possible by the availability of inexpensive printing, this breaks monopoly of Catholic Church. 1517 (The Ninty-Five Theses by Martin Luther)-1648 (Treaty of Westphalia)

Renaissance, 1430-1550

Mannerism, 1527-1580

Niccolo de Niccoli, 1364–1437, invents italic script

Poggio Bracciolini, 1380–1459, invents handwriting later adopted by Jenson

Oil painting spreads due to improvement in materials, 1400s

Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 1412-1416

First printing using engraving, 1430s

Guttenberg perfects printing press, 1439; prints Guttenberg Bible, first mass produced printed work, 1450-1456

When the German printing capital, Mainz, was sacked in 1462, many printers fled to new locations, most to Italy.

Nicholas Jenson cuts the first Italianate (oldstyle) font, 1470

Aldus Manutius creates first "pocket" book, Francesco Griffo cuts first italic font, 1500

Claude Garamond (né Garamont) cuts Grecs du roi, 1541; first to sell type fonts to other printers

Robert Granjon cuts Civilité, 1557; its italic is later adopted as the italic for Garamond

William Shakespeare (1564-1616 Elizabethan playwright)

Renaissance Artists

Donatello (1386-1466)

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)

Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516)

Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)

Michaelangelo (1475-1564)

Raphael (1483-1520)

Titian (1485/90-1576)

Mannerist Artists

Tintoretto (1518-1594)

El Greco (1541-1614)

Discovery, Invention, Revolution, 1600s–1799

Use of optics (microscopes, telescopes, and camera obscuras) changes how artists record the world, including hyper-realism

Late 1600s and the early 1700s, cotton cloth woven in India displaces linen and wool. At first banned in England to protect their wool and flax industries, cotton becomes main good of English trade.

Spinnning Jenny developed by James Hargreaves, 1765. Beginning of Industrial Era, where work was multiplied and machines replaced human and animal power.

First practical steam engine, James Watt, 1775

American Revolution, 1776

French Revolution, 1789

Napoleon Bonaparte stages coup'd'etat in France, 1799, goes on to conquer much of Europe

Baroque, 1600-1750

Rococo, 1720s?-1785

Neoclassical, 1750-1850

Romanticism, 1780-1850

Pantograph invented, 1603, Christoph Scheiner, allows reproductions to be created at any size

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek discovers microscopic life, 1674

Johannes Vermeer uses camera obscura to paint like life, 1660–1675

William Caslon cuts Caslon, first transitional font, 1716-1728

John Baskerville, a former teacher of calligraphy and wealthy industrialist seeking to improve printing quality, designs transitional font Baskerville, 1750s.

Giambattista Bodoni cuts Bodoni, first modern font, 1790s

German author and actor Alois Senefelder invents stone lithography, 1796

Baroque Artists

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669 Dutch Golden Age)

Peter Paul Rubens

Caravaggio

Bernini

Rococo Artists

Jean-Antoine Watteau

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Neoclassical Artists

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Jacques-Louis David

Jean-Auguste_Dominique Ingres

Jacques-Louis David

Romantic Artists

Johann Strauss II

Frédéric Chopin

Richard Wagner

Franz Liszt

Johannes Brahms

J. M. W. Turner

Eugène Delacroix (See Liberty Leading the People)

Francisco Goya

1810-1820

Napoleon Bonaparte defeated at Waterloo, 1815

Napoleon dies in exile, 1821

Erie Canal opens, 1825

B&O Railroad chartered 1827

Beginning of inexpensive mass transportation

First "fatface" (Bodoni on steroids), Robert Thorne, 1803

First cylinder printing press, 1100 pages an hour, 1812

Vincent Figgins cuts first slab serif fonts, 1815-1817

Steel pen developed 1820; contributed to the rise of Spencerian Script and advanced calligraphy in the 1800s.

Earliest photograph, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1826 or 1827

Noah Webster publishes first American dictionary, 1828

First typewriter patented by William August Burt, Detroit, 1829

1830

Queen Victoria begins her reign, 1837

Victorian era

Horror Vacui (Fear of Empty Spaces; term for cluttered home decoration style resulting from the inexpensiveness of household objects caused by industrialization)

Godefroy Engelmann is awarded a patent on chromolithography, 1837 (first full-color printing)

The Daguerre-Niépce method of photography is presented to the Academy of Science, Paris, 1839

Currier & Ives, lithographers (1834-1907)

1840

B&O Railroad reaches coal fields of West Virginia, 1842; beginning of inexpensive energy

S.F.B. Morse’s telegraph is used for the first time between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., the first quick communication, 1844. Values short, accurate communication; promotes cryptography

Pre-Raphaelites

Realism, 1848-1900

First fax machine, 1842

First painted Christmas card designed and produced by John C. Horseley, 1843

Richard March Hoe builds the first rotary printing press (using a round printing plate), 1843

Wood-pulp paper invented by Friedrich Gottlob Keller, 1844

Robert Besley cuts Clarendon, 1845

Realist Artists

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Gustave Courbet

Honoré Daumier

Jean-François Millet

1850

Petroleum distilled by Benjamin Silliman, 1855

Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of the Species, 1859

John Brown killed in raid on Harpers Ferry, 1859

William Morris begins the Arts & Crafts Movement, his reaction to Victorian over-decoration at the Great Exhibition

Joseph Paxton builds the Crystal Palace in London for the Great Exhibition, the "first" international exhibition, 1851

David E. Hughes invents printing telegraph, 1855

1860

U.S. Civil War and resulting industrialization boom

Louis Pasteur discovers germs and invents a process for sterilizing liquids

Impressionism, 1865-1885

Matthew Brady et al. invent photojournalism on the battlefields of the Civil War

Paris World’s Fair introduces Japanese art to the West, 1867

First postcard, Austria, 1869

David Stemple, typefounder

Impressionist Artists

Marie Cassatt

Edgar Degas

Claude Debussy

Édouard Manet

Claude Monet

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

1870

Joseph Lister develops aseptic surgical techniques

Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71

Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, 1876. Telephone becomes fastest growing information system because it doesn't require specialized knowledge and saves time. Unintended consequence is explosive industrial growth (like China after cell phone).

Thomas Edison patents the phonograph, 1877

Thomas Edison invents the first practical electric light, 1879

First Impressionist exhibition, 1874

Robert Barclay invents first offset press (prints to drum which then prints to paper), 1875

Bass Ale red triangle, first trademarked logo, 1876

Eadweard Muybridge photographs sequences of animal motion using still cameras, 1877-1886

Karel Klíč invents photogravure, which allows accurate reproduction of photographs, 1878

1880

First skyscraper (10 stories), first building with steel skeleton, is built in Chicago, 1884-5; Major William LeBaron Jenney, architect

First gasoline automobile, Carl Benz, 1885-1886

A. G. Eiffel completes the tallest building in the world, the Eiffel Tower, for the French Exposition Universelle, 1889

Century Guild

Arts & Crafts Movement, 1880-1910

Post Impressionism, 1885-1910

New York Daily Graphic printed the first reproduction of a photograph with a full tonal range in a newspaper using a halftone screen invented by Stephen Horgan. 1880

Ottmar Mergenthaler invents the Linotype, an automatic composing machine, Baltimore, 1886

Monotype foundry founded, 1887

George Eastman perfects his Kodak box camera, 1888

Auguste Rodin, "The Gate of Hell," 1880-1917

John Singer Sargent

Arts & Crafts Movement Artists

Rene Macintosh

Arthur Mackmurdo

William Morris

Post-Impressionist Artists

Paul Cézanne

Paul Gauguin

Georges Seurat

Vincent Van Gogh

1890

Financiers in New York buy most large American businesses and create trusts (monopolies)

Sigmund Freud begins developing psychoanalysis

Henry Ford builds his first automobile, 1892

Art Nouveau

Jungenstil

Secession

Glasgow School

Vienna Session

Beggerstaffs

La Goulue, Toulouse-Lautrec’s first poster for the Moulin Rouge, 1891

First movie camera and projector, William Dickson under Thomas Edison, 1892

First modern airbrush, Thayer and Chandler, 1893

First public film show, in Paris at the Hotel Scribe, 1895

Berthold Type Foundry releases Accidenz-Grotesk, 1896

Ubu Roi, first Dada play, Alfred Jarre, 1896

The Yellow Kid, the first American comic strip, illustrated by Rudolph Dirks, 1897

Art Nouveau Artists

Antoni Gaudí

René Lalique

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Alphonse Mucha

Louis C. Tiffany

1900

Modern Era

President Teddy Roosevelt works to break up monopolies, creates the National Park system

Social Revolutionary Party founded, 1901

First airplane flight, Wright brothers, 1903

Fauvism and Expressionism, 1900-1935

Ashcan School, 1900-1920

Weiner Werkstatte

Cubism

Futurism

Plakatstil

Priester Match poster, Lucian Bernhard, 1906

First Cubist exhibition in Paris, 1907

Paul Behrens designs the first steel and glass building for A.E.G. Factory in Berlin, 1908

Frank Loyd Wright builds Unity Temple, first modernist building in America, 1909

Morris Fuller Benton

Frederic W. Goudy

Pablo Piccaso

Henri van de Velde

Henri Matisse

Wassily Kandinski

1910

First public radio broadcast, Dr. Lee De Forest, 1910

Ford develops assembly line, 1913

World War I, 16 million dead and 20 million wounded, 1914-1918

Albert Einstein publishes theory of relativity, 1916

Russian Revolution, 1917

Vorticism

Dada

Russian Constructivism

German Expressionism

DeStijl

Bauhaus, German art school, embraces industrialism, "less is more," 1919-1933 (True Type of the Bauhaus)

First photosensitive silkscreen emulsion, early 1910s

Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel Duchamp, 1912

Armory Show introduces Modernism to New York, 1913

Rite of Spring; Igor Stravinski, Vaslav Nijinsky and Ballets Rousses, 1913

“Underground” font designed by Edward Johnston, 1916. First "geometric" sans-serif font.("A Typeface for the Underground", London Reconnections, 2009)

First jazz record, Original Dixieland Jazz Band, 1917

Fountain, Marcel Duchamp, 1917

Dada Artists

George Grosz

Hannah Höch

Man Ray

Russian Constructivist Artists

El Lissitzky

Alexander Rodchenko

1920

“Roaring Twenties,” Prohibition and mobsters

Women get vote in U.S., 1920

Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrates the first television image, 1925

Wall Street crash, 1929

Art Deco

Surrealism

Cabinet of Dr. Caligeri, Robert Wiene, 1921

Marcel Breuer, Wassily chair, 1925

"Battleship Potempkin," Sergie Eisenstein, 1925; propaganda film introduces film editing and montage to cinema.

Futura font, classic geometric sans serif font, Paul Renner, 1927

Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927

Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, first full-length talking picture, 1927

Kodak develops 16mm color film, 1929

un chien andalou, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, 1929, first surrealist film.

Eric Gill

J. C. Leyendecker

Russian Constructivist Artists

Sergei Eisenstein

Stenberg Brothers

Surrealist Artists

Max Ernst

Magritte

Freda Kahlo

Bauhaus Teachers and Students

Walter Gropius

Josef Albers

Herbert Bayer

Marcel Breuer

Johannes Itten

Wassily Kandinsky

Paul Klee

1930

Great Depression, rise of dictators world-wide

Spanish Civil War, 1936

New York World’s Fair, 1939

WWII starts, 1939

Moderne

New Typography

Socialist-Realist/Heroic Realism

Streamline

WPA

European designers flee Europe for the U.S.

Dubo, Dubon, Dubonet poster, AM Cassandre, 1932

35mm Leica II rangefinder introduced, 1932

35mm Kodachrome introduced, first widely-available color film, 1935

Henry Luce begins publication of Life, first picture magazine, 1936

Paul Rand starts art directing Esquire magazine, 1936. He continues as art director until 1941.

Picasso paints Guernica, 1937

László Moholy-Nagy founds the American New Bauhaus, Chicago, 1939

Alexey Brodovitch

Charles T. Coiner

Abram Games

Raymond Loewy

Herbert Matter

Stanley Morrison

Paul Rand

Jan Tschichold

1940

Alan Turing cracks Enigma code with a "computer," 1942

First modern computer developed in U.S., 1944

World War II ends, 60 million dead, 1945

Atomic bomb, 1945

Claude Shannon creates Information Theory at Bell Labs, 1945

Transistor invented by Bell Labs, 1948

American Modern

Atomic Age design

Abstract Expressioniam, 1940s-1950s

Citizen Kane, Orson Wells, 1941

Paul Rand becomes art director at William H. Weintraub Advertising Agency with copywriter Bill Bernbach, 1941. Clients include Dubonnet, Ohrbach's Department Store, and Olivetti. He continues there until 1955.

Graphis magazine published, Switzerland, 1944

Farnsworth House, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1945-1951

Lou Dorfsman hired by CBS Radio, 1946

Bill Bernbach joins James Edwin Doyle and Maxwell Dane to found Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), 1949.

Alvin Lustig

Walter Landor

Cipe Pinellies

1950

Europe rebuilds following World War II

Cold War, 1945-1989

Korean War, 1950

Color Television, 1950

Sidney Rosenthal’s Magic Marker®, 1953

First phototypesetting, 1953

Elvis Presley has first rock ‘n’ roll hit, 1956

First daylight (DayGlo) fluorescent pigments, 1957 (first used in "Tide" packaging, 1959)

First photocopier, Xerox, 1959

Civil Rights Movement

Swiss International Style

Polish poster style

Revivalism and Eclecticism
(Push Pin Graphics)

Googie

Film Noiré

CBS “eye” logo created by CD Bill Golden, 1951

International Design Conference in Aspen (became Aspen Design Conference), 1951

Saul Bass designs poster and movie titles for film Carmen Jones, 1954

Push Pin Studios founded by Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Reynold Ruffins and Edward Sorel, 1954

Reid Miles designs album covers for Blue Note Records, 1955

Paul Rand designs trademark for IBM, 1956

Helvetica designed by Max Miedinger and Edouard Hoffmann, 1957

Seagram building, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1959

Volkswagen "Think Small" campaign, Helmut Krone and Julian Koenig, Doyle Dane Bernbach, 1959

Charles & Ray Eames

Robert Frank

Georg Olden

Irving Penn

Bradbury Thompson

Henry Wolf

1960

Vietnam War

U.S. scientists develop the laser, 1960

J. C. R. Licklider, in paper Man-Computer Symbiosis, proposes universal computer networking, 1960

First industrial robot on line at G.M., 1962

President John Kennedy assassinated, 1963

First phototypesetting on CRT screen, mid-1960s

"Summer of Love" and Woodstock, 1967

Martin Luther King assassinated, 1968

Apollo 11, First manned moon landing, 1969

First message over ARPANET, the technical core of what would become the Internet, 1969

Compuserve, first commercial online computer service provider, 1969

Pop Art

Op Art

Psychedelia

Fluxus Manifesto (Neo-Dada), 1963, by George Maciunas

Josef Müller-Brockmann’s Grid Systems in Graphic Design, 1961

Andy Warhol, 100 Soup Cans, 1962

George Lois directs Esquire magazine covers, 1962-1972

Massimo Vignelli founds NY branch of Unimark International, 1966

Wes Wilson designs psychedelic posters for the Filmore West, 1967

Herb Lubalin art directs magazine Avante Garde, 1968

Robert Brownjohn

Paul Davis, illustrator

Alan Fletcher (Fletcher/Forbes/Gill)

Colin Forbes

Bob Gill

Armin Hofmann

Tomoko Miho

1970

First email, Ray Tomlinson, 1971

Vietnam war ends, 1973

Exxon Quip, first practical fax machine (one page takes 6 minutes), mid-1970s

Richard Dawkins coins the meme "meme" — ideas that replicate themselves, 1976

Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin sign the Camp David peace accords, 1978

First test-tube baby, 1978

First personal computers hit the market

Basel

Graffiti

Disco

Punk, 1977-1983

New Wave

Hip-hop and Rap

Paula Scher hired by CBS Records, 1972

First successful video game, Pong, released, 1972

Denise Scott Brown, Learning from Las Vegas, MIT Press, 1972

Nasir Ahmed develops Descrete Cosine Transform (DCT), a lossy compression algorithm that directly resulted in JPEG and MPEG image and video compression, and a varient, integer DCT, resulted in video compressions H.264, WebP and WebM.

First punk album, Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bullocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, 1977

First New Wave album, Talking Heads, Talking Heads ’77, 1977

First laser printer, $500,000, Xerox, 1978

Ruth Ansel

Jacqueline Casey, MIT

Chermayeff & Geismar

April Greiman

Paula Scher

Wolfgang Weingart

1980

Development of the Internet, 1980s

Space shuttle flights begin, 1980

First emoticon, Scott Fahlman, 1982 (see also Kaomoji)

Glastnost policy implemented by Russian Communist Party Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev, 1987

Berlin Wall torn down, 1989

First enlarging-reducing copiers, c. 1984 (end of Lucigraph, concept developed in Renaissance)

Postmodernism

Performance Art

Grunge

Gangsta Rap

MTV, all-music video cable channel, 1981

Memphis Group founded in Milan by Ettore Sottsass, 1981

Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, 1983

Adobe releases Postscript language, 1984

Apple releases Macintosh, 1984

Emigré magazine begins publication, 1984

Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building, 1984

Apple laser printer, $7,000, 1985

Aldus Pagemaker (first page layout program), 1985

Fontographer developed by Altsys, 1986

Illustrator developed by Adobe, 1987

QuarkXPress developed by Quark, 1987

Photoshop invented by Thomas Knoll (originally for Industrial Light & Magic to automate masking for "Star Wars" special effects), 1988

David Carson, art director, Beach Culture magazine, 1989

Tim Berners-Lee invents the Web, URLs, HTTP and HTML at CERN, 1989

Charles Anderson

Neville Brody

David Carson

Duffy Design

Fallon, McElligott & Rice, first major regional agency

Steven Heller, writer and designer

Tibor Kalman (M&Co.), print and product designer and social activist

Zuzana Leko, Emigre magazine

Clement Mok

1990

Hubble telescope launched, 1990

Alan Emtage codes Archie, first search engine, 1990

1st Persian Gulf War, 1990-1991

End of Cold War, 1992

Indigo, first digital printing press, 1993

The Global Network Navigator (GNN), first commercial website, 1993

Pixar’s Toy Story, first full-length digitally animated film, 1995

First commercial text message, Sprint, 1995. Poor keyboards encourages widespread use of logograms (lol, etc.)

Y2K — Widespread fear all computers will fail at turn of the century

Death of typesetting, 1990-1994

Web Design

Tim Berners-Lee writes the first web client and server, 1990

Mosaic, the first Web browser, is developed, 1993

After Effects, 1993

Adobe introduces PDF format, 1993

House Industries releases grunge fonts, 1994

JavaScript language developed, 1995

First portable digital camera, Minolta, 1995

CSS released, allows more complex websites, 1996

Matthew Carter designs Georgia and Verdana, Microsoft, 1996

FutureSplash Animator, which becomes Flash, 1996

Jonathan Ive designs first iMac, 1997

Adobe releases InDesign, 1999

Michael Bierut, designer and gadfly

Matthew Carter, Typographer

Lee Clow, Art Director

Joshua Davis

Kit Hinricks

Michael Mabry

Stefan Sagmeister

Rick Valicenti

Michael Vanderbyl

2000

2000; Al Gore loses election to George Bush by hanging chad ("Disenfranchised by Bad Design," Propublica)

9/11/2001; Afghanistan, Iraq Wars

Great Recession, 2007-9

iPod, 2001; iPhone, 2007; iPhone with video 2009

Barak Obama, first black U.S. president, 2009

Web 2.0

Demise of many newspapers and magazines

With “Web 2.0,” websites become interactive

Processing, software for generating art, MIT, 2001

Wordpress released, 2003

You-Tube, video on the web, 2005

jQuery, a library allowing easier coding of JavaScript, 2005

Etsy launched, allows designers to market directly, 2005

iPhone rejects Flash, signaling end of program, 2007

Marian Bantjes, lettering, ornate design

Irma Boom, book design

Kyle Cooper, video titles

Crispin Porter Bogusky, Mini Cooper ad campaign

Shepard Fairey, Obama "Hope" poster

Louise Fili, lettering and package design

Chip Kidd, book designer

Debbie Millman, writer, educator, designer

Eddie Opara, Pentagram partner

2010

Arab Spring, 2010-2011

Protests of police shootings in U.S., "Black Lives Matter," 2015

Cyber security issues become commmonplace

Donald Trump elected president of U.S., 2016

Natural disasters: Deepwater Horizon oil spill covers Caribbean; earthquakes, tsunamis and "1000-year" weather

Hand-lettered type

Google ranks mobile-accessible websites, 2015

Google Fonts released, allowing better type design on the Web, 2010

Instagram, online portfolio social media, 2010

Gap repeals logo redesign following extensive online backlash, 2010

HTML5, CSS3 released, improving interaction and animation, 2011

Adobe Creative Cloud, no individual licensing of software, all designers have all programs, 2013

Zoom allows remote living, 2013

"Mobile-ready" web design required, 2015

Sketch and other free and cheap apps vie to overtake Adobe, 2016–

https required for Google searches, 2017

Tad Carpenter, illustrator/designer

Arem Duplessis, creative director, New York Times Magazine

Jessica Hische, letterer

2020

covid-18, 2021–2022 — everybody learns to stay home

Procreate for iPad Pro competes with Wacom Cinque

Glyphs, other font programs cause explosion in font creation

Zoom, online conferencing program, makes it possible to easily coduct meetings and classes online

Postscript Type 1 fonts phased out, 2023

Jessica Walsh, SagmeisterWalsh

Jason Santa Maria (A List Apart, Slate)

Mike Perry, mikeperrystudio.com

Some other designers

Abridged History of Western Graphic Design