A brief history of graphic design
By: Monica Galvan
Tags: Art, Creativity, Design, Graphic Design, Visual Design

Key art movements that influenced graphic design

Now you have a better idea of how graphic design began with the earliest form of visual and written communication. Let’s dive into some key influential art movements that helped evolved graphic design.

You may notice how these art movements influence trends and how some of them even come back into style. It’s important to have a solid background in the history of design so you can understand where these trends come from and how to use them in your designs.

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau (“New Art”) flourished in western Europe and the United States from the 1880s until the First World War. It was a deliberate attempt to abandon the historical styles of the 19th century.

Creators of Art Nouveau sought to revive good workmanship, raise the status of craft, and produce a genuinely modern design that reflected the utility of the items they were creating. One distinctive characteristic of the style is the use of organic, asymmetrical linework instead of solid, uniform shapes.

Art Nouveau artwork by Alphonse Mucha, used to promote printing firm F. Champenois

Bauhaus

Bauhaus was an influential art and design movement that began in 1919 in Weimar, Germany. The Bauhaus school, founded by Walter Gropius, launched a new way of thinking.

Six months after the end of World War I, the school encouraged artists and designers to use their talents to help rebuild the broken society. The Bauhaus grammar — a triangle, a square, and a circle — evoked this back-to-the-basics mentality. They challenged everything, including the usual method of schooling.

They combined arts and crafts, classical and avant-garde styles, form and function. Bauhaus design incorporated minimalism, geometric shapes, and simple typography. While the Bauhaus bubble lasted for only 14 years, its influence remains in just about every aspect of modern life today.

Bauhaus design poster, 1923 (source)

Art Deco

Art Deco began as a celebration in Paris in 1925. The same decade that gave us The Great Gatsby, the affordable car, and the first film with sound.

Style, elegance, and sophistication are the epitome of Art Deco design. Art Deco uses simple shapes, stylized and geometric ornamentation, and elaborate use of expensive materials, both natural and synthetic.

Spanning architecture, furniture, fashion, sculpture, and more, Art Deco encapsulates the decadent spirit of the 1930s. The Rockefeller Centre, Chrysler Building, and Empire State Building were all designed in this style.

Chicago World’s Fair poster by Weimer Pursell, 1933 (source)

Swiss Design (The International Typography Style)

Building on the rational approach of the Bauhaus, this movement is all about function and universality. The style emerged in Russia, the Netherlands, and Germany in the 1920s and was further developed in Switzerland during the 1950s. Designers developed a cohesive, unified Modernist movement that became known as the Swiss Design or the International Typographic Style.

Logical, modular grid systems provided a structured framework to align different elements, something now considered essential for UI and graphic design. Realistic photography was preferred over more expressive illustration, alongside neutral sans-serif typefaces such as Helvetica.

Swiss design is minimal in nature. Minimalism has experienced a comeback in branding, UI design, and packaging. This trend is driven by influential companies such as Apple and Google who prioritize a clean, pared-back aesthetic above ornament and decoration. A vital contribution from the Swiss Design movement is their use of grids, can you imagine designing for the web without one?

Poster designs by Josef Muller Brockmann

Pop Art

Primarily a British and American cultural phenomenon that gained traction in the late 1950s and 1960s, Pop Art was named by art critic Lawrence Alloway because of the way it glorified popular culture and elevated common and unremarkable objects to iconic statuses.

The pop art movement began as a revolt against the dominant approaches to art, culture, and traditional views on what art should be. Sources of inspiration ranged from Hollywood movies, advertising, product packaging, pop music, and comic books, rejecting the pretensions of “high art” in favor of bold, graphic printmaking.

Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein, 1963 (source: Tate)

Postmodernism

Postmodernism was a reaction against modernism. While modernism was based on idealism and reason, postmodernism was born from skepticism and suspicion of reason. Modernists valued clarity and simplicity. Postmodernists embraced complex and often contradictory layers of meaning.

Young designers of the movement questioned the “form follows function” philosophy associated with Modernism derived from the Swiss Design Style (or International Typography Style). Designers created freely, breaking rules of design with the use of collage, distortion, vibrant colors, and abstract type.

During the late 1970s, April Grieman became known for her postmodern experimentation with her typographic innovations and colorful collage style.

Cover for WET magazine designed by April Greiman, 1979 (source)

The digital age

The introduction of digital tools provided a new, revolutionary way of creating graphic design. In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh computer. It used a simple, user-friendly interface that said “Hello”, inviting consumers to be a creator themselves.

Photoshop launched in 1990 as a graphics editing software anyone could use to manipulate images and make professional designs. Basic programs like Microsoft Paint made graphic art accessible to the masses.