[Music] all right welcome to a brief history of graphic design I am super stoked that you are here if you're joining me today on this video I highly suggest grabbing a cup of tea or a cup of coffee sitting back and enjoying this video if you don't have that kind of time save this video come back and watch it when you have some time because this is crucial the history of graphic design I should take a sip right now is absolutely important to the foundation of you as a graphic designer and as we're working through this brief history of graphic design you're gonna see that because in order to make sure that you use the styles the tools and techniques accurately you have to understand where they came from you have to understand what the goal of the person who was using them at their initial creation was trying to communicate and I'm gonna do that with you by helping you see how design was used and applied and then that way when you go and you pull from the masters of the past and bring it into the present time you'll be using it accurately and so let me say that this is sort of a brief history of graphic design this is a brief history as far as brief histories are concerned thinking that I spent over three semesters in design school learning about the history of design if I can do it in about an hour I am definitely killing it on the brief aspect so definitely sit back relax and enjoy this time learning about the graphic design history one quick shout out that I want to talk about on why I'm doing this so if you're interested I am creating something called the Nomad school of design basically you can learn design anytime anywhere and this is something that I have had a vision for for a long time and now I'm finally getting to the point where it's coming in to creation and so if you want to be a part of that initial run of graphic designers who I'm going to train from you know no knowledge no information all the way up to full-time you know getting into javis graphic designers then I want you to click the link below and join the Facebook group that I have set up or text design - online FB - four four two two two and now what this will do is this will get you in the group and this will let me know that you are definitely interested in becoming a graphic designer and doing it fully online and getting mentorship and getting the help you need to launch your career so head on over there join that if you're here as a graphic designer knowing nothing about history or wanting to brush up welcome I'm stoked you are here and I'm just excited to talk through this so this is gonna be fun time for me I love talking about the history of design and so let's work on through this right now so the importance of graphic design history for designers as I just discussed it is all about understanding why you're using certain design styles why you're using certain techniques why you're moving design in a certain direction and why are using certain colors it's crucial I mean it's absolutely crucial to understand what you are doing or else you have no idea the communication you're actually putting out there are so many times that people will do a design in a certain style and they don't understand that they're communicating vision B when they think they're communicating vision a and so the it gets lost in translation when what it was actually originally created for subconsciously the mind still understands it this way even though you're trying to use it this way and so that's really one of the big things I want to talk through is that you're trying to develop your understanding of the field you're trying to be inspired and you're trying to know what you are saying because if you say it wrong you might as well not even saying at all it's the difference between creative confusion and communication and as designers we want to be experts at communication alright so I'm gonna do a quick test if anybody can tell me who created this piece what era it was from and the purpose of its messaging so I want you to head down right now into the comments below or if you're on the live chat jump over into that live chat and fill out what era this is from who created this piece and the goal of its communication are you got your answers down there all right so this is Russian constructivism this was created by Alexander or odd chenko and during the Russian constructivist movement I'm gonna read you a quote and it says together the constructivist would seek to find the come the communist expression of material construction to establish a scientific base for the approach to constructing buildings and services that would fulfill the demands of communist culture and so if you're a designer and you come across this piece you say I love that I love the motion I love the energy I love the color I love the just a bold type I mean I'm gonna use that for X and let's say X is very much of something positive something that you know you're trying to encourage people to maybe give money to a certain foundation you know you're trying to do something very different from communism let's just say that and this is not a debate on communism versus socialism versus democracy this is not politics this is understanding clear communication well if you use that design style our minds subconsciously and our culture are going to get remnants of this right here they're gonna get remnants of this communist propaganda and so that's why it's so important to understand where your design comes from and what you're doing as a graphic designer and so the why the when and the why using certain styles listening to the rules breaking the rules when necessary and when clear and combining different expressions to communicate different emotional stimuli and helping people to understand Foley your message that's the purpose of understanding history so let's jump in where did it all start where did graphic design history start well it started at the base of communication as designers we are ought to be masters of communication and so it started with cave paintings and I know we're going way back we're going old school here we're going to the aborigine boys and these are some of the original cave paintings that have been found these were dated back to about 4000 BC and these were communicating their daily life they were hunting they were gathering they were just painting out what their life was like it's like kind of capturing in photography or having ass family portrait you know that's what that's what's going on here in these cave paintings so this is the oldest form of human communication known it is clear communication it is easy to understand we can clearly define what the images represent and that to me is what we can learn right here right now from these original cave paintings it's clear communication if you can't communicate clearly as a graphic designer then put down your pencil go back to the drawing go back to you know the mental brainstorming and then come back when you can understand okay how can I communicate clearly the message that I have so after that we move on to Mesopotamia the city of Ark these are the original pictographs 3100 BC this is the first sign of a written language centuries later cuneiform would rise from the roots of these pictographs and we'd find representations of food taxes animals so we're starting to understand and we're starting to get a picture of the communication the the signs the symbols the tools we're starting to form together communication and language from the cave paintings to 3100 BC and Mesopotamia the pictographs things are starting to become clear we're starting to be able to communicate ourselves visually as a human species the next thing we jump into is illustrated manuscripts and these illustrated manuscripts are found in Egypt so as you see we're starting to combine not only clear images we're starting to bring together the pictographs or starting to bring together how to explain what this scene is communicating so this is 23 40s BC this is called the Book of the Dead so this is cuneiform writings visual paintings were used for storytelling and so you're starting to see if you think about it look at this piece it's almost like a modern-day you know you got your main scene here in the middle you have your different communicative words pictographs on the outside and you know if you can visualize it's it's it's almost just a magazine and so you can see where you can draw inspiration all the way back to 23 40 BC without any problems it's just having the vision and the clear communication all right next thing we're to jump into is Chinese relief painting and this is where we start to see the ability to generate reproductions and mass-scale so we'll jump into this piece here and you can check this out so you see these are etching in two different substances and materials they use Jade ivory gold wood oh they actually use Jade twice sorry about that typo there and so this is gives you the opportunity to do mass production and as designers that's something that we thrive on is the ability to produce magazines is the ability to produce table now digital PDFs and downloads it's that mass production it's that first step towards what we can do today the invention of the alphabet so as you can see this here is the Greek alphabet but before the Greek alphabet we had symbols from Egypt and China three languages that spurred the rest of the world into language development were the North Semitic the Aramaic and the Greek and so these three languages gave us the base for our main forms of communication around the world after we got our languages established we have coming out of China we have the invention of paper so as you see we're just making steps one by one forward in order to make communication more readily available and easier to participate in you have Chao lune in 105 BC I know we're making big jumps here but I don't want to hang around too far back too long I know you're gonna want to get to the newer current design stuff but this is so crucial to understand you have to understand the roots of where things came from understand why each phase took place so until the invention of paper Asian cultures were binding together bamboo slates and wooden strips around 400 BC and then 105 beseech a loon invented paper and he he may have not been the first to invent paper it may have come from someone somewhere else but he he was the first to bring it into mass production he was the first to really bring it on the scene promote it use it and so we credit him with the invention of paper so if you're out there if you invented paper comment below give me show I'm totally kidding illuminated manuscripts is what we're jumping into next I mean absolutely beautiful it's just amazing to see the transformation between the centuries of how much color how much detail could just rise up from the human from humans inspiration it's truly incredible to see so these Luminator manuscripts they were at the combination of typography and art they started to merge into this order of communication and the stories were coming to life for those who were less literate and so what you were seeing is people's ability for literacy was far lower during these time periods because there was no mass production of books you know we're not gonna see mass production of books for another about 1,000 years at this point so these Illustrated manuscripts allowed people to understand the story without being able to read most villages had a couple books in them a lot of times churches would have manuscripts and then that's where people would hear the reading of a written word otherwise it was passed down orally and through sound in order for people to learn the language and so what you're seeing is moving forward of a written language and then also the helpful the helpfulness of visual aids and so what we're seeing here in this is graphic design was beginning the evolution as we know it with these illuminated manuscripts so the evolution of printing what we first see is typesetting on the Chinese used typesetting in order to communicate and mass-produce different pieces and they had moveable type what movable type allowed them to do was have single letters exchanged places and they didn't have to create these very you know that's create numbers and numbers of large casts and etchings to produce work they can rearrange they could organize they could communicate different messages and so you weren't trying to store tons and tons of plates you were instead storing lots of individual letters and sentences and words and then you could combine them into your own message and so really this is some of the beginning roots of printing and the ability to do mass production in unique ways not just print the same thing every time and so these works became reproducible and this is where the word typography comes from it's the technique of using individual letter blocks to create reproducible works by moving organizing and we're using the blocks to create documents I just love this evolution I love to see how steps were taken each piece and process and just built upon it reminds me of you know my favorite quote from Thomas Edison is I see farther only because I stand on the shoulders of giants and I think that is so crucial in viewing the history of graphic design alright so we're making big jumps big leaps here we're jumping up to Gutenberg's printing press so there it is that is what produced the Gutenberg Bible this was the first book ever produced on Gutenberg's press and this gave us the ability to mass-produce written works he built the machine from scratch he was from a wealthy family and he built every single piece he was a prolific metal worker woods he was a he was a prolific metal worker he was very good with wood and different materials which gave him the ability to create his own machine took him 10 years to develop it and after he developed this machine literacy skyrocketed it's very much what the internet did for us in the early 90s in late 80s moving up into the 2000s the internet skyrocketed our ability to communicate around the world very much the same thing for the Gutenberg printing press it just exponentially gave people the ability to begin to read and understand the written word so Gutenberg's printing press was a absolute just pivotal point in graphic design history and in the history of communication are moving necks into woodcuts I love this because this is where you can start to see illustrations art designs as it were being able to be reproduced and this is how you'll start to see the combination of type and visual illustration merged together so the reproduction step towards design illustrated books designs become reproducible and that is the biggest benefits for these woodcuts art is one-of-a-kind oftentimes but design really you want to be able to reproduce on scale and that's one of the big differences between design it kind of is becoming more valuable as its reproduced whereas art is more valuable as it is the one of the kind piece alright so again here we go gonna take another sip of tea here I hope you're enjoying this walkthrough so far I've graphic design history now we're gonna keep moving up through the levels and getting to what I kind of consider the good stuff or you can start to see how the actual design industry took shape if you're enjoying this definitely share it out let people know you know what you learning about what you're watching and I would love for more people to really get this in their hands and understand design for its professional and historical value a lot of times I think design is just seen as something that you know is kind of pulled together really quickly or anybody can do it who has you know a computer and in Photoshop but really to understand truly the art and skill and craft of graphic design you need to understand its history to understand what you are trying to say in the goal of your communication alright so the next thing we're moving into is style versions of typography and this is where people really took liberties in combining Gutenberg's reproducible type and the stylization of woodcuts in one and so they would kind of pull them together into the printing press and you're starting to see just these beautiful works coming out in reproducible manners and so these started in germany these were often reproduced in books swine hem and pen arts the 1460s these are really the two key figures to start to produce these these Illustrated stylized versions of typography grab my place here again alright so a whole a holistic approach to design what we saw take place in the Italian Renaissance was this holistic approach to design what became known during this time period the 1460s to the 1480s and extending on either side was craftsman would write illustrate in design his or her own work so what they would do is they would start out by writing the work and then they would illustrate the work and then they would assemble it all and design it into one complete work this work here is by Simon de Collins and it is a graphic illustration it was a graphic illustration for educational purposes and it was during that time period it was that you did it all you were the jack-of-all-trades and I think that that is something that we've lost you have a lot of experts but you don't have a lot of jack-of-all-trades and it's interesting because as a designer you can really take two approaches you can take expertise or you can take jack-of-all-trades most times people and myself included think expertise and specialization is where you're gonna make the most monetary value and you're going to double down on your influence in a specific field I personally don't think that that is the most fulfilling roll but if you're looking to make money as a designer that's your Avenue but if you're looking to be fulfilled and really have your vision unfold then this is really the way you want to go this Italian Renaissance ideal but that being said we'll keep moving forward but my point is if you want to make money specialization is the way to go if you want to be well-rounded and truly enjoy your craft then I would say a jack-of-all-trades approach can be more fulfilling people could argue both ways simply my opinion all right so the flourishing and the time of Conformity so what you saw just a moment ago will click back there real quick is Simon de Collins work and this graphic novel moving forward I called this flourishing in a time of conformity because his graphic novel was yes interesting but it was very bland it was very standardized and compared to this work by George BIC hem it is absolutely beautiful I mean he just took wood cuts reproducible type illustration and just combined them into this beautiful work and so flourishing in time of conformity he was stepping away from what people expected because of this industrialized movement with the printing press I mean you're going from original works and all these you know hand done pieces to this industrialized very much rhythmic printing press work and so he kind of revolted against that and started to create some of these original pieces which were in fact reproducible but they didn't have that reproduction look wasn't that I really loved about his work and this was in the Rococo era so in the Rococo era of painting this was the 1710 he was a poet engraver artist and Penman he broke away from like I said that mechanical conformity and so I love his work because it really just just enlightens the design style and a time of just kind of standardized work all right so the heritage of type so up until this point type was very fluid it didn't have really standardizations there wasn't a lot of you know we do it this way we do it this way and this is kind of the way it's set this is how you produce letters at this height and this width I'm not sure if you know a lot about typography a great book that I would highly recommend here it's cool thinking with type step back to them like thinking with type this really helps you understand how type is created from a gia from a mathematical standpoint and I love this work a lot what I'm saying is before this point type was not very mathematical and they really crunched down on getting it to the point where okay we understand why we're introducing things and we understand what it means we're producing the type that we're producing all right it was kind of a roundabout way to talk about the heritage of type but let's jump in so castellon and Baskerville these were two of the originators of getting how do you how do I say this I'm getting getting just conformity not in a negative way in a positive way because before that like I said it was very haphazard and so Baskerville and Cal salon were given the ability to make sure things were in order and were consistent so William Castle on font was used on the Declaration of Independence so you see up here at the top in Congress that is Castle on and it is an English font used to declare our independence from England and I just think that is pretty hilarious on that we would do that I don't know if that was purposeful but I find that quite amusing and next was Baskerville created by John Baskerville and he bridged the gap between old typography and modern typography as we know it today so all that humbug about what I was talking about with standards versus non standards he was an instrumental piece in making that transition from old type to modern type so custom typography is something we're gonna move into next so although we have standardization although we have you know these rules and these regulations on how to use type we still need a human expression we still need to create something custom something unique which you still see today there's typographers and people producing letter forms that are absolutely beautiful and that goes that I exception throughout design history so we're gonna look at these woodcut typographies what I love about this and this was by a man named xi worth if I'm not mistaken let me jump forward yet william xi worth he produced these wood cuts because his clients were coming to him with needs for just unique posters that would really capture attention and i know i'm sure a lot of you have seen these to me he is one of the first people to really tamper with and pursue hierarchy a lot of stuff pops out at you don't know the first thing that I see what I'm looking at this poster is 20 lions and then I kind of jumped out I see Bengal tigers and I'm like okay who is who is this and this is the Manders this is the Royal with the birds and the beasts and everything jumps out at you and he really works the hierarchy and he takes you kind of through a story and I just love it because he's tampering with your visual mind in order to pull you in certain directions and so the use of typography in a hierarchal is really important because otherwise you're allowing your viewer to decide what they're gonna look out first what they're going to do first and as a designer we don't really want to allow people to do that we want to bring them through a story and we want to direct their eye so this is produced with the scroll saw and he made custom advertisements from his customers and like I said he was a leader in the development of hierarchy the Industrial Revolution did a lot of great things for design it gave us standardizations it gave us the ability to reproduce in mass scale some people would say there was negative influences from the Industrial Revolution but in my opinion each time technology takes us to another level you lose jobs but you also create a handful of new jobs I'm not gonna go deep into this but I think right now we're at the cusp of virtual reality and artificial intelligence and a lot of people are in panic but just like the Industrial Revolution there will be jobs eliminated and there will be jobs added that's not a political statement what I'm just saying is that the Industrial Revolution the Industrial Revolution changed things in art and design and I think there was some good and some bad really the biggest thing was the onset of more powerful faster stronger more reliable more consistent printing presses this is a steam-powered printing press it was created by Frederick Koenig and it was faster than any other printing press before it we're moving up into the 1814 right now and you're just seeing that design is becoming more necessary as technology is able to produce higher quantities and so that's what I'm seeing also right now in the world burned today so you say okay our designers needed in this world anymore do we need graphic designers and I would say we need more design now than ever before because every single day you scroll through Instagram you're on a news feed you are you know interacting with different applications you're looking you're driving through town you soon there's gonna be electronic billboards everywhere you can look and so design in my opinion is only continuing to grow the need for graphic designers is only continuing to grow just as it was during the industrial revolution so we're hitting another revolution this is just the digital revolution rather than the Industrial and so I think the need for designers continues to climb as culture well as technology excuse me and as technology is integrated into culture next we have the Linotype printer so this printer could easily and quickly set lines of type again another step above the steam-powered printer in that it could do custom things custom things it could print custom pages faster so the steam-powered was faster with production the ability to spit out more but this one could do variety far faster so this is called the Linotype and this by autumn our merjan thaller he produced the Linotype alright so this is one of my favorite and show you this actually so we'll jump back here this is the Linotype I don't know if I showed you that or not I'm jumping back and forth of my screens here so that's the line of type by auto marriage a thaller alright moving forward so capturing life this is what got me into graphic designs this is one of the original connoisseurs of photography this is Lois Jake's negau tested light-sensitive materials for capturing an image through glass lenses so he is credited for really understanding how to take lenses push light through them with light-sensitive material to capture an image then you have John Calvin Moss who was the first to effectively transfer an image using a light-sensitive gelatin emulsion and if you know anything about you know 35 millimeter photography film photography you know that that concept was refined through the you know generations to be able to transfer images so these two guys are really the leaders of photography and as we know photography has been absolutely crucial in graphic design industry today photos are still how we communicate you know before you know Instagram photos were an amass quantity already and then once instagram facebook myspace all came about snapchat as well for sure the amount of photography that gets produced is is just unreal and so these guys here were crucial in the creation of that form of communication so color and possibility Unleashed I love this because with the onset of these two printers it's the lithography printer and this is the chromo lithographic printer these two allowed far more expressions than ever before the amount of color that the chromolithography print could produce the color range was just off the map from what anybody had ever seen now how the lift lithography works as it is the concept of water and oil don't mix and so when you apply oil paste to a flat printing stone you scratch away the excess oil where you would like the ink to print then that is where the print lays down and so this is you're able to produce very quickly and very in very very strong detail the work that you would like to create now this was created around the turn of the 1800s so late seventeen hundreds early 1800s was when we see this technology come into play all right now getting into some art styles we went through a lot of technology went through a lot of different things involved in industrial evolution to get designed to where it is needed so the remember the mass production of Technology and works books articles magazines newspapers whatever that might be gave the need for more designers and so we're gonna now look at some art movement smart styles that gave way and shaped graphic design one of my favorite art movements personally is Art Nouveau what I love about Art Nouveau is the very graphic illustration stylization that came with the art movement they were very much interested in producing posters very much interested in producing very live graphic communication so the leaders in this time period where Alphonse Alphonse Mucha ah Alphonse Mucha was a leading figure his career was from 1912 to 1926 in gwinnett Harper magazine he brought Art Nouveau into America and then Henri de toulouse-lautrec Moulin Rouge so if you look at these you can understand that these are what brought together illustration for magazines versus photo so today we use a lot of photos and our magazine covers but these were the recreation of photos and this is the illustrative works that were on the cover of many magazines all right so the beginning of graphic design as we know it the person I'm about to speak of next is really a key figure in setting up a lot of the baseline standardizations and foundational principles of graphic design he would later partner up with a handful of individuals to create a school in which design would truly flourish and get its strong dead-set principles but first Peter Behrens started out at the let me say this correctly the düsseldorf School of Arts and Crafts for architecture art and designers so that's where Peter Behrens started out you can see right here and after that after he trained artists designers and architects he moved into to work for a company called AEG now AEG was a manufacturer of a lot of industrial goods so fans light bulbs things of that nature he was the first designer to promote the use of the grid he was the first designer to introduce the world to branding advertising and informational materials and so what you're seeing here is the first branding designer he's the guy who said okay we need a logo we need business cards we need letter heads we need advertising we need informational materials we need promotions we need brochures he was spearheading the idea that that was necessary and just how crazy to think that that is so crucial in today's society how every piece of technology or every item you buy comes with an instructional manual packaging there's branding that you know the difference between if you go to my son is about mmm eight and a half months old now and we go to the store you can see the VTech toys versus the play toys versus fisher-price toys it's all clear versus like the target and completely understanding the differences between each brand and you're saying well duh obviously yes but this is where it came from he is the one who spearheaded this idea that branding was so crucial and so important so this is around 1903 to about 1910 roughly that these things were taking place so the next thing I like to look at is modernism and cubism and I would like to say is this happenstance or is this intentional that design gets kind of batched into this group this is futurism cubism is it really an influential piece in graphic design history futurism and cubism are really avoiding all none necessary elements to clear the way for strict communication so as you see here there's not it's just this is the image this is what we need to say this is the motion so we have you know a diver and it has flags and he has water and you can really understand the messaging but there's not a lot of detail it's very simple it's very straightforward so this is works from Pablo Picasso you know you see cubism is very disorganized and grotesque and I personally don't like to say that we have a lot in common with futurism besides the fact that we're trying to be some people who communicate clearly with as little elements as possible and I always say that design is not complete when there's nothing left to add but when there's nothing left to take away that's by my one of my favorite authors antoine day expert and he was so so determined to say that you don't ever need to add add add you start with something and you say okay does that help with the communication is that crucial is that necessary you never wanted to distract somebody from the intended message and so I appreciate that all cubism and futurism I appreciate that they're trying to pull away all these unnecessary elements in order to get you to focus on the true point what I don't understand though a lot of times is like how confusing some of the works can be so if they're trying to pull away unnecessary things why are we still confusing we look at them just a thought I'll leave you with that and that will keep moving through this history of graphic design what I find the next movement comes into play is something that was made in rebellion it makes its way into art history some people say it as influential remnants of communication in graphic design but overall I'm a little confused on the movement it's called the Dada movement I know a lot of you I'm sure recognize this this can be a bit of a statement piece I think is what I find this movement more than anything this was from our Sheldon chomp coming off the tail end of World War one the Dada movement was rebelling against the establishment so as people who were tired of the war tired of the killing tired of the hate but in a sense they produced more confusion with our artwork they produced more uncertainty with our work and so I appreciate what they were doing they were trying to step against what was happening with the war there was a lot of a lot of killing a lot of brokenness a lot of destruction happening and it was their response to it to me it needs to be put into play because if you're going to do something like this with your design if you're going to cause a certain feeling of a certain emotion and a certain uneasiness with your design there has to be purpose behind it and so that's why I think this is still so crucial in the history of graphic design is because they were doing this with purpose and so if you're gonna do something like this make sure it is for a reason don't just do it for the sake of doing it so that's why I think the Dada movement is still very crucial in the history of graphic design all right the next thing we're going to move in to is where we start to see some of this vector illustration come from so what is the rise of vector illustration and I love this movement this is a piece by Bernhard Lucien and Bernhard I love his work it is more formally known as pictorial modernism and also plaque --is-- steel it's German for poster styles is where we get our flat vector shapes used great using great designs people objects etc so I really enjoy this movement and if you're interested in you know getting more deep into vector illustrations then definitely go look at pictorial modernism placa steel and the work from Bernhard and like I said the reason we're going through all of these different designers all these different design styles is because we want to know where to look back to in order to be inspired in order to understand how we can communicate more clearly with the message that we have so our client comes to us or we have a vision and an idea where do we need to go to pull from to then come back and say okay this is what I believe we communicate it best because this is what the site the subconscious of the mind understands because of the historical value one of my favorite quotes about history is people who forget history are doomed to repeat it and that I believe is something that you cannot neglect as a graphic designer if you repeat it make sure you're repeating it with purpose and accuracy all right even war has its own look we're moving into World War two when America was producing design to get people pro war there's something about this design movement that I absolutely love the reason being is they were able to take something so broken so destructive and put a lightness in an air about it and so if you as a designer have a difficult subject that you're trying to communicate I would definitely look to these posters as inspiration because they took something that was necessary in order to end a mass slaughter of people throughout the world and they brought a light to it was it right was it wrong that's something that I think has really historians and two different people who study this deeper but from a design that's what I'm talking about these historical values in this design I'm not talking about the political aspects I'm talking about the design so from a design point these propaganda posters were they were able to idealize the vision of the war they painted the war not for how it was but to be seen rather for what it could be and and that is one thing that amazes me about these pieces and I look back to them often because I'm just I'm amazed how well that the designers for these pieces produce them a lot of times you can't find who designed these pieces I'm sure with a little more digging into it you could but for this brief design history I'm not gonna go on and on this has its roots in placa steel Art Nouveau chromolithography and the Industrial Revolution so the power of shape and form this too is stepping back into the Russian constructivism movement this is from a designer named Ellis Lissitzky and this is reminiscent of pictographs with the juice of objects lines and letters to communicate the idea so these groups of designers El Lissitzky and David and Vladimir berlet Baluch are key players in Russian constructivism and the reason this is coming back into play is because these two would be kicked out maybe not as nothing kicked out but would run and find refuge in other countries when communism really started to crack down on a lot of artists who were communicating in ways that they did not once they started to get a little bit of their own voice and the communist regime did not appreciate that so we find a lot of designers fleeing different communist oriented countries for countries like Switzerland America in order to be able to still freely communicate accents and colors this is another thing we're moving into if anybody can name this right now I want you to head down into the comments section below produced this piece and how much did it sell for I'll give you a minute to do that this piece was a great inspiration to me as a graphic designer it helped me to understand grid it helped me to understand proportion and help me to understand minimalist communication this movement I think is really neat and it's called the distill movement and this piece is by pietà Mondrian and it's sold for fifty point three million dollars Wow that's all I have to say harmony and order was established through a reduction of geometric elements that is really the purpose of the digital movement is the reduction of the overuse of elements and they just simplified and so I've been able to glean a lot of inspiration and put together a lot of nice design pieces from using some of these lines some of these groupings some of these grids they're kind of unconventional grids I'll have to call them all right so the foundations of modern graphic design the Bauhaus if you know anything about graphic design you know about the Bauhaus my teachers in college were huge fans in the Bauhaus there was a bit of a rivalry between two of my teachers one would just thought it was the greatest thing ever the other thought it was applicable but not you know the the rules of the industry but the Bauhaus was crucial in setting up the principles and applications of graphic design it had three locations throughout its history it had a location in weimar de saw and Berlin a led by Walter Gropius environment Hans Meyer into saw and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Berlin they established the principles and practices and philosophy of graphic design it found its roots in distill and constructivism the reason being is there was a lot of designers and artists who came out of Russia who came out of Germany to be a part of the Bauhaus we have Paul Klee wassily kandinsky yo.hannes it's in Lionel finger lászló moholy-nagy Herbert bear and Josef Albers one very interesting thing about the Bauhaus and if you want a full history in the Bauhaus that is something that we will do in in the Nomad school of design but this again is just an overview for you to understand key and notable time periods to go research and understand for yourself unless you join us over at Nomad school design the Nazis ended up pushing the members of the Bauhaus out of Germany which is why we see three locations so what happened was they would you know kind of get going they would establish themselves they would teach and then all sudden Germany the Nazis would kind of push them somewhere else you know so they started an environment they're like okay you know we don't want you here push you that way and as you see it was really created around the time of a lot of unrest in Germany you know you got 1919 to 1928 and you donate to 1930 1932 1933 so you know world war ii and just you know come to a close your between World War 1 and World War 2 and so there's a lot of unrest taking place and ultimately the Nazis ended up pushing them completely out of Germany and a lot of them fled - like I said America Switzerland which is why we see Europe being such a key place for arts and culture for so long and they're all sudden graphic design really takes its roots and its strengths in America because they were they were running from running from you know the Communist agenda to America which was a place where they could express themselves there were more individuals that were key players in the bajas movement but these are just some of the notable figures all right Jean it tricks holds new typography so this is a gentleman who I just I really like his style he believed that type should always be in movement there always needs to be motion he was arrested by the Nazis and then he fled to Switzerland so as you see the Nazis kind of bit themselves in the butt because they had all of this opportunity for arts and culture and design they had this opportunity to create you know really good propaganda for their movement which was not a good movement obviously we're looking back but it's funny how we can often cut off our nose to spite our face and that's what the Nazis did with a lot of the arts and culture that were surrounding them and so he fled to Switzerland and what I love what we can pull from the history to communicate effectively is don't get stuck in one area one of his leading contributions was the fact that Jean explored learned grew from the entire history of graphic design you can see postings from Russian constructivism he postings from the Bauhaus he pulls things from futurism these angles in these lines and so that's one thing I love about his work is his don't get stuck pull things from different areas be influenced learn grow up but make sure you're using them correctly all right the next gentleman who I really love to study evil actually I believe not mistaken yes it is one gentleman okay good I was on track would be mr. Herbert Bayer this gentleman was Photoshop before Photoshop existed I loved his work because you have you almost have an entire motion picture movie in one scene you have clippings from skiers coming down the hill to type coming across to a close-up of a lady to mountains in the background two slopes in the foreground his work is is very dynamic it tells a very strong story so before a Photoshop and Adobe or even a thought he's producing this incredible work that just brings to life off of the page and we have a motion texture depth some videos can't even do as much emotional strength as his pieces were producing so I really love Herbert Mathers work all right America and graphic design so like I said a lot of the key figures were fleeing from the communist regimes whether it be the Nazis whether it be some of the agendas in Russia and flooding to Switzerland to America so we see a lot of influences from these other countries coming into America and really creating that melting pot that we are so for herewith when it comes to food arts culture well design is definitely another one of those melting pots so the first person to key the term graphic design was the man the myth the legend Addison doing ins not many people know about him except for the fact that he created the excuse me he coined the term graphic design he was a book producer so he would design he would lay out he would culminate images and typography and that is where he said okay this is graphic design so that's addison doing ins next we have less turbulent vector pieces with his use of typography emotion and motion this is where we see a lot of coming out of the plaque is still a movement or pictoral imagery and vector illustrations as it's known so you're seeing you're gonna start to see these designers pull from history past and so that's where I really want to pay attention I want you to kind of guess okay where did this come from so he was the first to incorporate the modernist movement in America and like I said that modernist that kind of that cubism that kind of pictorial design he was taking a risk because it was not really an appreciated movement it had those remnants of the Russian constructivism and being that there was a lot of tension of that movement it wasn't highly accepted but during that same time the Russian designers were being pushed to America which gave Beal a lot of support and Russian constructivism started to get a following and started to really find a movement in America art Harper's Bazaar the producer of these illustrations was a man named a wreaths formerly known as romaine de terre Toth he was Russian born trained in Paris and moved to America he's been known for bold colors cubism and art deco now he was a leading designer for the covers of Harper's Bazaar for many years and he is really the new forms the vision of magazine covers before photography really took its spot and what I love about his designs is they very much have a photo ask a look to them they're very much just real life everyday people doing everyday things and so I just love the boldness and the brightness of his covers so if you want to learn more about you know good illustration flat vector illustration he's a great one to study he's got a lot of great work with Harper's alright this is Alexie's Aleksey broad avec love this work first one to really start to manipulate type as you see he would take the shapes of the work that was given to him to create some of these magazines from these articles so he would take the woman and he would you know turn her into a type of treatment so he was really the first to express typography into form he would make type treatments a very bold statement in everyday design so in magazines books posters etc so if you're looking for you know unique tight treatments and somebody to look to for for the applications and those LX obradovich is fantastic alright so I love this guy because I am a huge fan of grid I'm a huge fan of organization and so this is Yosef Muller Brockman and also Armin Hofman but the work we're looking at here is by Brockman so the typography choices and applications each typeface is crucial to the work of current graphic designers and that's something that he really spearheaded he spearheaded a lot of moving out of the Bauhaus movement he spearheaded a lot of sin serif typefaces a lot of the grid and which really set the Swiss design movement apart from the Bauhaus because the Bauhaus if you look at a lot of the works they were not as keen on the grid as somebody like from the Swiss design movement like Brockman so you saw a lot of use in the Bauhaus movement of the sans-serif typeface but then a lot of times you didn't see the good solid grid that is used in something like the Swiss design style and so those are kind of some key differences between those two movements is the grid versus not grid also an emphasis on de stablishing hierarchy was a big movement for Brockman you can see here EU read exactly what he wants you to read and I think that is a very good trait of a designer is directing the eye and taking charge of the piece alright no design lecture or historical walkthrough be complete without mentioning this gentleman we all know Paul Rand as somebody who's created the most original shapes and just unique twists at face value in America he received in filaments from Paul Klee a wassily kandinsky and the Cubist movement great works I have read multiple volumes of his design as well as his thoughts on graphic design some other notable designers during this key time period would be C pine lez for her excellent conceptual photography auto storage for his manipulation of typography and integration of photography Hemet Crone for his incredible use of subtle and white subtlety and whitespace herb Lublin on how to break the rules of typography I find a lot of people go a little grotesque when breaking the most of typography but I love his use of just off-kilter he's just kind of out there the way he uses typography so definitely go check him out and then George Louis inspires me but I'll let you discover if he inspires you I think his work is very influential on a lot of stuff that I but I love and like to see in the graphic design industry all right moving forward to another key an absolutely crucial designer in history Saul boss Saul boss brought to life movie posters in a whole new way up until this point consider posters like Casablanca they were very much big bright images of the actors maybe remnants of a scene from the movie Saul took another spin on it he created this very mysterious look into the life of the movie it was dramatic shapes it was colors where his secret go-to weapons for creating tense scenes that leave you wanting to know what will unfold in the cinema whereas in the older movie posters I found a lot of times they kind of painted it for you they kind of said hey this is what you're gonna expect where he left it up to mystery and that was a new look that was a new thing in design as we knew it was that mysterious form that he created so editorial design took off in the 1950s with page layouts that brought drab information to life and that's what I really like about what Saul did for the design industry all right so before we move into this next key figure this is somebody you can really learn from in order to kind of pull back all that inspirational courage that gets you into trouble as a new designer as a new designer you oftentimes at least when I speak from my own perspective think that you know way more than you do and that's okay that confidence is very important but if you look to key designers in order to pull back some of those urges you'll see that simplicity will always win over the abundance of creative elements and creative expression and so by studying this next figure you can really get a good base level on what your style is and how you express it and so this next figure is the person who created the New York subway grid he is responsible for creating this system to manage the insane Cobb's web or soup bowl as it's called under New York I don't believe anybody else could really have done this in such a simple clear way this is Massimo Benelli he's notable for his Vannelli cannon where he describes his rules and his strict adherence to those rules no matter what his clients desire his clients he's been known for his clients to come to him tell him exactly what they and him do the polar opposite because he believes that it was not best for the project an intern produced an incredible project that was award-winning and communicated the actual goals and vision of that client I'm not saying that you can ignore everything that your client tells you to do your client needs to be listened to and what they say needs to be appreciated and valued but it is important to have strict rules that you adhere to as a designer in order to make sure that your design communicates with clarity and focus he only used six fonts in his entire career he was obsessed with grids right align text Helvetica text edging the borders of the document are all indicators of a work for Massimo Vannelli I I did this so for an entire year I only used three fonts for in graphic design when I was in my master's degree for graphic design and my teachers never complained they never noticed because what you want to do is you want to find a type with a lot of variety if you have a type with a lot of variety you can use the same type twenty-five to fifty different ways and create new looks and expressions every time so try and do that try and stick to three to six fonts with a lot of diversity inside those font families that's something that you can learn greatly from Massimo Benelli I love his work he's been a great inspiration to me as a designer this famous Bob Dylan poster of course comes from Milton Glasser he's responsible for the resurgence of some remnants of Art Nouveau but simplified down of course he's also responsible for the legendary Bob Dylan piece that you just saw and I heart New York so a great designer definitely read a lot about him and a lot of his visual expressions as I was going through design school alright so this is what is considered the grunge movement of design the grunge movement of design was an expression it was a resurgence of a movement focusing on third-world awareness it was really heavy in political views it was very raw very tense it's the type of it's the type of design that makes you very uneasy when you look at it they accomplish that very well and of course is not my favorite design movement since I am one of more order grids and very much more like Massimo Vannelli but there's some people who really gather great inspiration from the grunge movement Gunter Rambo and Robert Masson are your to go to for sure in that movement amongst some others this next movement comes from two designers that I really think had great backgrounds in the principles of graphic design because when you look at their work it is very clear it makes sense it is very loud it is very feels very chaotic but when you look at it it still has hierarchy and your eye is still pulled to the correct subject and that is a very good use of the principles of graphic design though it's chaotic it has purpose it has direction and this comes from David Carson and Paulo share this is a post-modernism this post-modernism was a revolt against the constraints of the grid they wanted to kick off the rules have some fun and produce some disorganization but they were not haphazard as I as I just said they they were people who were both studied in graphic design and very intentional Paula Scher was the designer who created the iconic Citibank logo so I mean when you look at this work versus this work it's very different but it was very intentional and she accomplished it very well and so that's what I'm saying if you want to produce work like this awesome I think I think it's fantastic work I think it works very well thinking communicates very clearly but you need to understand your foundations and your principles first before you go ahead and try and break the rules because if you go out and just do something of a postmodernist expression you don't understand the roots it's just gonna look like chaos where she had good prints good foundations and it worked very well here all right so keeping our eyes on the horizon who are some key figures you want to look at right now in graphic design some notable designers are Stefan Sagmeister chip Kidd Michael Beirut who is actually trained by Massimo Benelli he is now a member at pentagram big design agency Ruth Ansel Chad Michael and Shane Griffin these are all very very prominent key designers in the graphic design industry that you want to keep an eye on amongst all the historical values of graphic design all right well if you've enjoyed that again click the link below this video or text design - online - Facebook or two four four two two - to get a part of the Nomad School of graphic design where I'm just looking to create an online experience for graphic design school that actually takes you from knowing nothing to being a full-time designer now will that happen overnight it will not it will take work but that is my goal I want to see really a new sort of graphic design education that I wish I would have had I believe my education was very strong but there was things that were left out that I wish would have been there the reason I did get them is because I pursued them through mentors and through some people who could help me bridge the gaps between where school was and where my career needed to start so this has been a brief history of graphic design I'm so so grateful you came out today and if you stuck around this long I appreciate you so much for hanging on in this video my name is Benji Kaiser of Benji Kaiser comm please comment below ask me any questions but most of all I want to see you over in that Facebook group getting on the Nomad school of design I will see you here on the next episode [Music]