Questions tagged [history]
Questions regarding the history of design, typography and/or art.
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80s typography book with red apple on the cover
I am looking for a book from the eighties (or potentially older), a sort of font catalog. It was white, large format (approximately A4), and had a picture of a red apple on the cover.
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What is this "circled G" glyph alongside Greek text in an English book from 1765?
From Thomas Edwards' The Canons of Criticism, printed by C. Bathurst (1765) in London, in a font that (as you can see) has long-S and c-t ligatures:
The text centered in this image says:
of Nat. ...
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How did they prepare an image for printing before Adobe?
How were images even prepared for printing before Adobe? What was the printing process? I really seem to be missing what they were doing between the Gutenberg press and the Adobe software when it ...
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Who designed the Life Magazine in 1936? Who was responsible for the whole visual look of the magazine?
I can't find any editorial designers from the period 1930-1950, who worked for that magazine. Who created the logo? who made all those decissions in design?
Even other important 1930s graphic designer ...
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Is there a name for this form of 19th-century (?) table of contents design?
I've been remembering and inspired by an old style of table of contents/chapter summaries where a list of short sentences or phrases describing the events or contents of the chapter is presented ...
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How did Tove Jansson work with the illustrations for her book "Who Will Comfort Toffle"?
I'm very fascinated by the illustrations by Tove Jansson in her book Who Will Comfort Toffle? You can see some examples of the printed images in this search.
In short, the images are printed in 7 spot ...
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Who first started using Gaussian-blurred layers in UI?
Gaussian blur in graphics is mainly known as effect in iOS (2013) and macOS (not pretty familiar). But was Apple the first, who started using it in their user interface?
Much earlier than iOS 7, in ...
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Why are Serif endings still needed at all?
Serif endings are a curious thing of the past that, to me, they don´t seem to have any real purpose today, except remind the forms of the past.
We have to admit that Serif fonts are more legible, but ...
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Identification of a lively style of hand lettering from around 1900
I have come across a certain lively style of hand lettering on some old postcards that interests me. I have only two examples:
The full images can be seen here and here.
The images are from ...
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Where did the Mountain + Sun Image Iconography Originate?
As far as I know, the Mountain + Sky or Mountain + Sun Iconography is used almost ubiquitously to represent an image file across Windows and Web browsers.
Whether it be a:
A png file
An unloaded ...
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How was the old GeoCities art made?
I've been going through old archives of Geocities pages and I'm slowly becoming obsessed with the general aesthetic. I never had the chance to make my own back in the day as internet was a luxury ...
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Why is the effect called Dodge?
In the process of answering a question on Reddit, I got curious about why the Dodge and Burn tools are named as they are. I understand now the terms relate to photography, and "Burn" makes sense to me,...
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Does a "minimalist" or "minimalism" category exist in some formal well venerated design or art literature and what would be one or more examples?
Design or art forms I would personally categorize as minimalist would be:
Aniconism: Especially, Islamic and perhaps also late (and perhaps also early) Yahwistic and early Buddhist
Abstract art: ...
user147753
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Why is Courier the preferred font in the legal industry?
I watched a video online where a lawyer explained that Courier is the font preferred by both court stenographers (and writers submitting manuscripts), and that it was also the font seen in stenography ...
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Olivetti history and/or coffee table book
I'm a big style fan of the company Olivetti, I mainly know them for their typewriters (Lettera 22 and 32 are my favorites) but doing a little more research I found some amazing print ads ( https://www....
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Where did the early graphic design theory in Asia originate from?
As a North American designer, most of the graphic design theory I've encountered can be traced back to the Bauhaus in Germany. I've also read there was a less famous Russian equivalent to the Bauhaus ...
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Graphic Design History [closed]
Can anyone explain the reasons that make the modernity of the 1950s and 1960s seem outdated in graphic design now?
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What does “Pica” mean in the name of a typeface?
I’m wondering what pica means in the following context -also view Pica Roman n°2 from this article, Pica Hole font, and IM Fell DW Pica font:
James Mosley summarises [Caslon’s] early work: "Caslon'...
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How are competing design standards merged for joint-agency or transnational projects?
Reading through the NASA Graphics Standards Manual, pages 7.9–11 inform how the iconic worm logo and other graphical elements are to be used on flight-ready vehicles, whether aircraft, spacecraft, or ...
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What was this 1970s scale drawing device called?
Back in the 1970s we used to have a projector-type device to make scale drawings of archaeological artefacts. It was a big beast with a glass drawing platform under a hood and handles on the front to ...
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What is the name for these serif-like features of stereotypical "Old West" lettering?
Looking at the dedication plaque on the Salt Lake Temple, I was moved to wonder: What's the deal with this stereotypically "American Old West" style of lettering, where almost every letter has sort of ...
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What's the origin of "Kern, Baby, Kern."?
On many blogs and typo-webpages, tutorials etc. I keep seeing variations of this phrase "Kern, Baby, Kern."
I have searched for it and found many more occurrences, so it must be a profound truth or a ...
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Why was capital N temporarily inverted in 1468?
An answer for "Why does the small h letter in Garamond italic bend inward?" shows the following image:
The middle row of this image (marked Han 86R, Rome 1468) has the capital N inverted compared to ...
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Is there a way to save the current GIMP edit history as a script?
Is there a way to export the edit history so I can use it in a script-fu?
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What resource to learn about the psychological effects of typography?
The recent questions I've asked all about how to achieve a special psychological effect in typography, and I think I need to have a better insights on the psychology of typography to effectively ...
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How did Pink get associated with feminine beauty to begin with?
Women's History Month began this week, and gender equality is booming more than ever. Many brands are attempting to show support. Some of those same companies however are facing backlash over their ...
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What is the origin and the name of this style of the glyph "0"?
Unlike your usual methods of distinction like a dot or a slash in the center, or a narrower shape, this style uses horizontal stress. Good examples of it are the Academica, Turquoise fonts. I'm ...
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How could letters overlap in manual typesetting?
Generally speaking, ascenders and descenders should not touch each other in the text body.
This is self-explanatory as it could lead to text that is difficult to read.
However, Erik Spiekermann ...
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High pass photoshop filters skips the edges of the histogram?
In this Natalia Taffarel presentation, she explains that photoshop high-pass filter "skips the edges" of the histogram and that for creating an accurate high-pass filter we have to apply -50 contrast ...
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Classic Pizza Hut Lettering - who designed it?
I can't seem to find any reference to who designed the classic pizza hut logo, although I swear I read it somewhere at some point. Specifically I'm interested in the lettering! Any help appreciated!
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Type Research: »Die Rettung des Abendlandes« by Ernst Otto Montanus
Recently, I came across this book cover in an old antiquarian shop and I was immediately struck by the typeface used. All attempts at researching the typeface's name or origin or maybe the designer ...
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Does anyone know what style this monogram is based on?
Was flipping through Louise Fili's book and saw this monogram. The text says it was designed based on 18th century designs, but I'm having trouble finding any reference to this style of monogram. ...
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How were Apollinaire’s Calligrammes typeset?
How were Apollinaire’s Calligrammes typeset?
Was it set on a letterpress? Linotype? How were the curved lines achieved?
I can't seem to find anything online about this, but I am very curious.
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Why do some rare old printed manuscripts have mixed cases?
I wasn’t able to find any example photo, but I recently saw some old manuscripts printed in the 18th century (I believe) at the University of Vienna that had mixed letter casing in the middle of the ...
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How were printing plates produced from multicolour drawings before the digital era?
There are many ways of duplicating an image.
I'm thinking of graphics-containing newspapers and magazines circa 1950s and 1960s.
When an artist produces an original ink-and-paint drawing/photograph/...
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Help identifing font of isolated character in historic documet and find modern match
This image below shows a few lines from the July 1948 Bell System Technical Journal.
The 'p' character in the second line, used to typeset the "p0 = p1 = 1/2" equation is the character in question. ...
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Who first discovered CMYK?
It has been used for colour printing for many, many years, but who (and when) first discovered that a bright pink colour (magenta), a light blue (cyan), yellow and black can be mixed to create almost ...
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When and why did spaces around an em dash originally appear?
Today, the usage of spaces around an em dash in English depends on the publisher's style. But in scanned old books, I find only unspaced em-dashes—similar to this one. (Moreover, in printing, the em ...
user64032
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Why is the numpad on a keyboard not designed to print typographically correct symbols?
As Wikipedia states, the numeric keypad, number pad or short numpad
provides calculator-style efficiency for entering numbers. The numpad’s keys are digits from 0 to 9, addition (+), subtraction (−)...
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Examples of expensive color related printing mistakes?
I was preparing a lesson for new designers about "How to make print ready files?" and I wanted to add some historic facts about the greatest and most expensive print mistakes—something interesting to ...
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Why do most of the well known currency symbols have strikeouts in their symbols?
We encounter currency symbols every day as shorthand for a currency’s name, especially in reference to amounts of money. Most, like these common currency symbols,
have strikeouts in their sign. Even ...
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What are the origins of terms "em" and "en" as typographic units?
As you know one of the most common versions of the dash in typography are the
en dash "–" (Unicode character U+2013 and HTML symbol –) as well as the
em dash "—" (Unicode ...
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Is the Google logo a good example for basic trends in logo design?
Last year one of the most popular logos changed significantly by introducing a controversial "'new logo and identity family 'designed to work across multiple devices.":
I remember that I was ...
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Who designed monokai color scheme?
I admire Monokai color scheme. Did the makers of Sublime Text design it or is it in use before Sublime Text arrived?
The second part of the question is that can I freely copy it for my own editor or ...
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How to find which brush was used in a layer in Photoshop?
In a new layer, I selected the shape of the letter U and used a specific brush to brush in that selection in Layer 16 (in the screenshot below).
Now I can't figure out which brush I used to get this ...
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Before computers, how did cartographers draw roads with perfectly parallel sides?
If you're drawing a road on a map, and that road happens to be straight, it's easy to draw its two sides parallel: you just move the ruler. But most roads twist and turn, and drawing their sides ...
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How were scientific illustrations made before the spread of digital computers?
Before the advent of digital computers, a lot of scientific publications had high quality illustrations. How did they do this without computers?
EDIT
Examples of illustrations to which I am ...
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Why do fonts set to the same (pixel) number of size differ drastically in actual size when displayed on screen? [duplicate]
Something that has always puzzled me is the fact that when I change the font used in a program, even though in theory the font size is remains the same, the actual displayed size differs dramatically. ...
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Delete only one step in the middle of history (Photoshop)
Is it possible to delete only one step in the middle of history (keeping all steps after it) without juggling with multiple files?
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Who first used three stacked bars as an icon for "menu"?
The three stacked bars for a menu (known as a “hamburger menu”) seems like a pretty new concept. Is there any canonical information out there about who created this icon?
I’m curious because it has ...
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