Fernandez 1

Verania Fernandez

Ms. Plemmons

English IV

March 8, 2017

Lasers on Trains?

Where would the Impressionists have been without the invention of portable paint tubes

that enabled them to paint outdoors?... The truth is that technology has been providing artists

with new ways to express themselves for a very long time (Rieland). Technological innovations

and societal needs have been a major role in the evolution of graphic design. Before the

introduction of technology, artists were limited in their methods of displaying their skills. Now

many artists are turning to the graphic design trend to aesthetically appeal to a broader audience,

while still maintaining their own personal styles.

Whether people from ancient times have known it or not, they have been using certain

aspects of graphic design since the early date. The first record of mans creativity was 15,000-

10,000 B.C. and they are cave paintings at Lascaux, France. Beautiful pictures were painted

using pigments by cave-dwelling ancestors in Paleolithic times (Kidd 12). These cave paintings

couldn't have been seen by everyone at anytime so something had to be done which led to

introducing books. During the Middle Ages, manuscript books preserved sacred writings. These

early books were written and illustrated on sheets of treated animal skin called parchment, or

vellum, and sewn together into a codex format with pages that turned like the pages of

.
 Fernandez 2

contemporary books (Graphic Design). There were people that just wanted to make these

books even more special and meaningful. The 18th-century Rococo movement, defined by

complicated curvilinear decoration, found its graphic-design style in the work of the French

typefounder Pierre-Simon Fournier. Fournier designed a vast variety of decorative ornaments

and florid fonts, allowing French printers to create books with a decorative design complexity

that corresponded to the architecture and interiors of the period (Graphic Design). Typography

was huge which helped in order to label certain objects or to simply teach others. Typeface

designs evolved into what is known now as Old Style types that were influenced by capital

letters found in ancient Roman inscriptions and by lowercase letters in manuscript writing from

the Carolingian period (Graphic Design). Inventions are amazing but they can come with their

downfalls, although there can always be a solution or methods of fighting the downfall. During

the 19th century, a decline in the quality of book design and production was one side effect of

industrialism. A book-design renaissance began as a direct result of the English Arts Movement

at the end of the century. Their leader, William Morris, played a major role in the evolution of

design. He believed that returning to the craftsmanship and spiritual values of the Gothic period

could restore balance to modern life. Morris preferred his beautiful well-crafted objects he

designed than tasteless mass-produced goods (Graphic Design). These people helped influence

other movements to introduce new creations and their unique designs. During the 1890s and the

early 20th century, Art Nouveau was an international design movement that surfaced and

touched all of the design arts- architecture, fashion, furniture, graphic, and product design. Its

.
 Fernandez 3

symbolic characteristic was a twisting curvilinear line. Art Nouveau graphic designs often used

stylized abstract shapes, contoured lines, and flat space inspired by Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock

prints (Graphic Design). Many people wanted something new to be added into their everyday

life and they helped to come up with a variety of unique inventions to see the world in a

different way. People can look back to the early 19th century when animation was first starting

to develop. One invention was the zerotype and it was used to demonstrate early animation by

taking a series of images and placing them around the circumference and then the device was

spun to give the illusion of movement (Whitaker). Creativity helped so much for making

everyone's life easier because it allowed for inventions to be created to make life a little more

fun. Photographs have been manipulated almost since they first appeared in the 19th century,

but it wasnt until computers came along that creating a distorted reality became much easier

and commonplace (Kidd 108).

Without technology, the evolution of graphic design could have taken a really different

path on designing things for ones self or for the world. Throughout the 20th century, as

technology available to designers advanced rapidly, so did the artistic and commercial

possibilities to design (Graphic Design). Art and tech have been more intertwined than ever

before, whether its through providing new ways to mix different types of media, allowing more

human interaction or to simply make the process of creating it easier (Rieland). As new

technology emerges, different ways to creatively interact and collaborate arise with them

(Arts). Graphic design is changing constantly because of many peoples needs, wants, and

.
 Fernandez 4

their different styles (Cresci). Digital and playful art projects contribute to debates about the

design and practice of interactive, smart environments, including cities, in todays automated

world (Arts). With the development of computers, people also had a need to expand

entertainment. Thus, in 1947, Thomas Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann developed the worlds

first known video game (Whitaker). As printing and book production developed in the 15th

century, advances in graphic design developed alongside it with compositors and typesetters

designing pages as they set the type (Graphic Design). Chromolithography also made colorful

pictures available to ordinary peoples homes for the first time in history. Designers came up

with ideas for packaged goods offered to the public in tins printed with iconic images, bright

colors, and embellished lettering (Graphic Design). There are endless possibilities of how to

create or design things now because of technology and people from totally different cultures and

lifestyles can start to catch on.

Technology that is added with creativity will mean that graphic design will become a

trend and everyone will want to do it. Increased technology means more consuming which leads

to graphic design becoming more popular (Cresci). Looking back in time, there was the idea of

creating one unique language but all around the world people were writing their very own

different language. Many scholars believe that hieroglyphics were the first real written language.

But within a few hundred years, many completely isolated societies in China, Mesopotamia, and

Greece were creating and developing their own written languages (Kidd 84). Surviving artifacts

show that the Chinese developed a wide range of uses for printing, achieving a high level of

.
 Fernandez 5

artistry in graphic design and printing from an early date. Artisans cut calligraphic symbols into

woodblocks and printed them beautifully and neatly. These printed sheets of paper displayed

illustrations and religious texts and were then pasted together to make printed scrolls (Graphic

Design). There needed to be ways of getting a point across to either the world or even the

people across the street. The poster was one popular medium for graphic designers. Posters that

were printed with large wood types were used only to advertise new forms of transportation,

entertainment, and manufactured goods during the 19th century (Graphic Design). Maker

culture continues to grow because of more devices and processes being developed. It attracts a

wider range of participants into the making of art and enables artists to cross over into areas that

they may not have explored before (Arts). By the turn of the 21st century, as advanced

technology and industry spread throughout the world, graphic design had become a global

profession (Graphic Design). Industrial production lowered the cost of printing and paper,

while making much-larger press runs possible, thus allowing a designers work to reach a wider

audience than ever before (Graphic Design).

A design can be really beautiful and aesthetically pleasing to one person, but to someone

else its just another thing to look at. While early manuscript designers were not consciously

creating graphic design, scribes and illustrators worked to create a blend of text and image that

was at once harmonious and effective at conveying the idea of the manuscript (Graphic

Design). It was the overall main idea or emphasis on a specific project that really mattered.

Over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, advertising agencies, book publishers,

.
 Fernandez 6

and magazines hired art directors who organized all visual elements of the communication while

also bringing them into a harmonious whole, then creating an expression corresponding to the

content (Graphic Design). There is an element of taste essential to design, yet an effective

piece of design can work even if it's not to someones taste (Leveque). Whether people like a

design or not, even if designing and creating a project may seem like the same thing, there are

differences between art and design. A key difference between the prognostic functions of art

and design is how the messages of each are interpreted by their specific audiences and

demographic (Leveque). Art can be described as many things, but everything that is

surrounding a person is considered art because it was designed by someone to have a specific

look or feel (Whitaker). An artists primary motivation is to create a work with the intention of

conveying a viewpoint, state of mind, or visceral feeling and to create an emotional bond

between their work and the viewer. Creating a work is a means of personal validation or to

inherent self-expression- to be viewed, appreciated, and interpreted in an infinite number of ways

(Leveque). Graphic design is the art and profession of selecting and arranging visual elements to

convey a specific message to an audience, which includes typography, images, symbols, and

colours (Graphic Design). Whether it's fine print on the back of a shampoo bottle, the colors

on a box of cereal, or where to put the numbers on a remote control, there's a great deal of

thinking that goes into the things people use, read, purchase, play with, and consume (Kidd 5).

Graphic design needs everyones willing mental participation, even if it's subconscious. It is not

a physical experience but a cerebral one (Kidd 4). Therefore, graphic design is a collaborative

.
 Fernandez 7

discipline: writers compose words and photographers and illustrators create images that the

designer combines into a complete visual communication (Graphic Design). All graphic design

is illusion, because it uses ink on paper or pixels on a screen to make someone think they're

seeing something that really isn't there. For example, Chris Milk, a video artist, created an art

installation called Treachery of the Sanctuary, that was a part of the Digital Revolution

show, and it was meant to explore the creative process through interactions with digital birds.

The installation was a giant triptych and gallery visitors got to stand in front of each of the

screens. The first screen shows the reflection of the persons shadow disintegrating into a flock a

birds, which , according to Milk, represents the moment of creative inspiration. In the second

screen, virtual birds diving from above are pecking away at the shadow and that symbolizes

critical response. In the third screen, people get to see how they would look with a majestic set of

giant wings that clap as they move, and that, says Milk, captures the moment when a creative

thought turns into something larger than the original idea (Rieland). (See illustration.) That was

Milks idea and his own style to be able to stand out in the Digital Revolution show.

Although there are similar methods of using certain techniques, people had their own

original ideas or styles that made them different from each other. Hieroglyphic narratives

composed by scribes were depicted with colorful illustrations on rolls of papyrus. Pictures and

words are joined into a cohesive whole. These two elements are compressed into a horizontal

band and a special style of brushwork is used for the writing and drawing. Flat areas of colour

are bound by firm brush contours that contrast vibrantly with the rich texture of the hieroglyphic

.
 Fernandez 8

writing (Graphic Design). It was all about getting inspired but also to take an idea and making

it completely different to fit other people's needs. For personal data to provide more engaging

experiences, art and storytelling themselves must become more flexible (Arts). Marketers

learn to harness the power of personal data to encourage people to buy more stuff while artists

and storytellers develop skills needed to use personal data to provide more contextual and

personalized experiences (Arts). Artists and designers created many projects but maybe some

didn't need to involve technology to make life easier. Eric Standley, a professor at Virginia

Tech, is one artist who doesnt use technology to make the creation process simpler. Actually,

it's just the reverse. He builds stained glass windows, only they're made from paper precisely cut

by a laser. He starts by drawing an intricate design, then meticulously cuts out the many shapes

that, when layered over one another, form a 3D version of his drawing Standley says the

technology allows him to feel more, not less, connected to what he's creating (Rieland). Lasers

can either be used for cutting out glass windows or to display art in the sky. It's one thing to

project laser light onto a stationary wall or into a dark sky, but digital media artist Aaron Koblin

and interactive director Ben Tricklebank have executed the concept on a much larger scale. In an

art project titled Light Echoes, they managed to mount a laser on a crane atop a moving train

which projected images, topographical maps and even lines of poetry into the dark Southern

California countryside. Those projections left visual echoes on the tracks and around the train,

which were captured through long-exposure photography (Rieland). There is lots of creativity in

.
 Fernandez 9

the world but what many designers and artists really want is for someone to stay true to

themselves and to , most importantly, have fun.

Artists were limited in their methods of displaying their skills, but with new technology

emerging they are able to turn to graphic design showing their own unique styles while

aesthetically appealing to a wide audience. Technology plays a big role to help make designs or

creations easier. Anything that is seen around us is considered a design and art because it was

thought up by someone to express or emphasize a certain idea or problem or even an emotion.

.
 Fernandez 10

(Rieland)

.
 Fernandez 11

Works Cited

"Arts, Culture, Creativity and Tech: Key Trends for 2016." The Guardian. Guardian News and

Media, 08 Jan. 2016. Web. 22 Feb. 2017.

Cresci, Allison. Personal Interview. 23 Feb. 2017.

Edgar, Ray. "Design." EBSCOhost. NCWiseOwl, 15 Oct. 2016. Web. 22 Feb. 2017.

"Graphic Design." Encyclopdia Britannica. Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc., n.d. Web. 22 Feb.

2017.

Kidd, Chip. Go: A Kidd's Guide to Graphic Design. New York, NY: Workman, 2013. Print.

Leveque, Elise. "Art vs. Graphic Design: The Debate Rages On." N.p., 3 July 2013. Web. 22

Feb. 2017.

Rieland, Randy. "7 Ways Technology Is Changing How Art Is Made." Smithsonian.com.

Smithsonian Institution, 27 Aug. 2014. Web. 22 Feb. 2017.

Whitaker, Rodney. "The Relationship Between Art and Technology." People.clarkson.edu. N.p.,

n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2017.