Chronologies of Print lecture

Chronologies of Print lecture

Print was a revolution, it made it possible to communicate a message through text and image in its varying stages of progression through the ages. Its original purpose wasn't to look pretty and be aesthetically pleasing it was to communicate a message. 

The basic idea of Print was to produce text or imagery buy applying a medium to a surface for example the first form of Print in the form of image communication was found on cave walls. The medium been some kind of oil based ink and the surface been the cave wall. 

Printing is seen as a real thing, it exists. Its a physical thing. Not a snipped of information in the huge mass that is the internet, one day a website could be there the next it could be gone. Were as print will always be archived for example newspapers. 

On this concept of information been passed on through varying sources like the internet a task was carried out on the internet, someone at the front read a message from a printed item passing it on whispering to the person behind, when it got to the back row the message was manipulated that much it made zero sense. This links with the use of social media and how a story can be diluted down through gossip basically. Something I have touched on in a past research project. 

A basic timeline of print moving on from caves dates back to the year 200BC, printed mediums in a physical form originated in Japan and an ink medium was printed onto cloth.

500 the Chinese began using this method, 300 years later in a country that isnt that far way from each other? Its shows how hard it was to get a message communicated away from local areas.

It wasn't until 1400 when Europe finally discovered print, they saw this an opportunity to communicate religion in publication formats. This use of religion to communicate context helped distribute information and progress print. Knowledge was seen as power, so religious beliefs and religions held lots of power at this time.

1500BC UK got printing, 1800BC Americans got printing.

Mass communication came possible in 1450 when the Gutenberg press was invented, previous to this 20 pages a day could be produced by hand in publications, this press meant that 3600 pages a day could be published through the use of mechanical moveable typesetting. People now started to print onto paper, as it was cheaper to produce,versatile and easy to work with and a lot easier to distribute. 

 

At this time there were 3 main classes. Upperclass who had access to education  and were classy, well spoken and educated literate people.

Middle class people were literate but not as well dressed.

The lower class were seen as poor, scruffy non educated non literate cultures.

Punctuation and glyphes began to develop through the use of hot metal pressing type setting. This sparked the idea of type design, from been originally to communicate a message people began seeing typography as an art form. 

According to Marshal Mclulhan he predicted that through the progress print was making on communication and the development of mass communication he predicted the birth of the world wide web 30 years before it was actually produced. 

In 1880, the '8th wonder of the world' was born. Lino type. It allowed us to create solid lines of type through the use of a basic keyboard system allowing speed of communication, it helped newspapers mass communicate at speed a lot better due to before when news was received to typeset it individually it would take days and the news would be out of date. Linotype allowed it to take hours and back then a newspaper was 8 pages long (1884).

In 1970 the use of Linotype was abolished, a team of 30-40 men was reduced to 1 through the birth of the first computer system. 

Other print methods that are still used today and benefit different purposes are the following. 

Etching.

This was a form of dry point engraving used to create imagery commonly used for religious publications. 

Lithography.

Was a cheap method, word and image could be used together by using acid & limestone exposure to create a printing plate then oily mediums used to print this plate onto multiple surfaces to create publications and posters in a mass quantity. 

Screen printing.

Was a cheap, easy to reproduce and distribute method of creating interesting visual outcomes and is used a lot in the creative industry today. 

Bold public propaganda messages were beginning to be displayed at this time. The main propaganda concept of the progressing from these times lead to the Obey campaign. He was also responsible for the Hope posters created to put Obama into the white house so his political influences on the public cant be questioned. He saw street art as a form of mass communication, the obey concept was a blown up photo of Andre the giant when he received bad press so this campaign was made to regain his popularity basically.