History of Graphic Design

Catalog description

This is a lecture/discussion course in which students will study the major developments in graphic design from the Industrial Revolution to the present. This course will familiarize students with major trends in European and American design, with a particular focus on graphic design in the context of art history and the history of material culture. Organized as a survey course, the class will focus on key examples of styles and innovations in graphic design, as they developed in relationship to their times and places. Students will recognize similarities and differences between the work of significant designers, and contemporary developments in modernist visual art, and the theoretical underpinnings of major design movements.