This Chapter discussed the origins and history of graphic design. The late seventeenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century was a period of rapid growth and change. Advances in printing techniques facilitated by the industrial revolution led to a creative reaction and blossoming across The West. This began in England with Arts and Crafts movement. Headed by William Morris, the Arts and Crafts movement shunned mass production and idealized the ornamental craftsmanship of the middle ages. While his luddite ideology eventually squashed his movement, his ideas and decorative motifs soon spread like wildfire across the continent ushering in the movement known as Art Nouveau. In France, Japanese art, the Arts and crafts movement, and new printing techniques all led to the beautiful, flowing ornamentalist posters of Alphonse Mucha that are the stereotype of French Art Nouveau. Belgium at this time also had a boom in poster design at this same time. Across the pond, Americans had their own, conservative version of Art Nouveau
Not long after this creative explosion of ornament, a group of artists in Vienna, inspired by the Glasgow School of design rejected the "needless" decoration of art nouveau and created designs that were very geometric in form and put function before form. They were called the Vienna Succession. This movement and visual style spread into Germany, coupled with the idea of gesamtkunstwerk german designers embraced mechanization and commercialized design in a way never before seen. German artists and designers moved the flat geometry of the Vienna Secessionists into the powerfully simple sachplakat style.
In the late 1800's a creative reaction to the industrial revolution spread commercial art across The West, bringing back and revitalizing the ornamental aesthetic of the middle ages, which in turn was reacted to in central Europe. The importance of the evolution of the printing press cannot be stressed enough. Without those advances design would not exist how we know it today.
