Chapter 9

The Industrial Revolution brought about many changes to graphic design as well as new inventions. It also created a need for new typefaces, which typefounders filled. Robert Thorne designed the fat faces category of type, which is a roman face with an increase in the contrast and weight with thick, heavy strokes. Vincent Figgins came out with the antiques with even weighted letters, short ascenders and descenders, and rectangular serifs. He also produced the first version of Tuscan-style letters, characterized by extended and curved serifs and was varied throughout the nineteenth century. The sans-serif type also appeared during this time by William Caslon the fourth. One invention of the Industrial Revolution was wood-type. Problems with metal-type lead to this cheaper alternative by Darius Wells. This allowed new typefaces to be made so easily that customers of a printer could create any kind of lettering they wanted. Innovations of the printing press made great strides too. Friedrich Koenig developed a press that ran on steam and produced 400 sheets of print per hour and worked with a roller that inked the type instead of the hand-inking balls. Curved stereotype plates increased printing speeds even more and soon machine-set typography and machine made paper brought about mass communication. The invention of photography opened up even more doors for graphic design. Joseph Niepce is credited with producing the first photographic image by putting a pewter plate in a camera obscura. He continued to experiment with other light-sensitive materials with Louis Jacques Daguerre who had perfected a process to produce his daguerreotype prints. William Henry Fox Talbot was doing something similar in England with his photograms, which are images made by manipulating objects with light hitting photogenic paper. During the 1860's photography was being applied to prints by wood engravings and then reproduced with a half-tone screen. Photography developed into motion picture photography due to Eadweard Muybridge's innovations. It's basically changing light going through several photographs in a row and joined by the human eye.
I think it's fascinating to learn how photography developed. It's something I think we take for granted today that really made a big difference in the way information and ideas travled from person to person. To be able to capture a moment or object exactly is a great concept and to see how someone thought that it might be "charming" to recreate them onto paper without a pencil or printing press.