Print started out being purely a form of communication, as text only.
Printing its self is defined as applying inked type to paper, specifically through the use of an offset process.When something is printed its phyical existance makes it very real and therefore its apparent veracity is increased.
Print used to be a carefully considered process because of the way it made things real, it formed an important link between a complex idea or peice of information and its visual form in order to communicate it.
Prior to print information was shared through word of mouth, this inacurate method meant that each person knew something different making the truth hard to find. Print pinned down the 'truth' so that everyone knew and understood one thing, this was pivitol in the spread of riligion.
This creates a truthful connotation for print and a spread of information and knowledge, taking the form of books such as the bible. The exact pinning down of a religions beliefs arguably caused the devisions in christianity we are familure with today, if people knew exactly what they were expected to believe they could dissagree with it.
Print did three major things:
-document
-communicate
-reproduce/duplicate
The first place for printing to occure was China in the form of wood type on cloth. Printing of a similar nature did not appear in europe for another thousand years.
The separate nature of civilisation meant that the developments in type were seperate and so were the resources that fueld them. Religion brought together peopel pooling resources and allowing great leaps of development in printing methods. So much was put into developing print because it allowed religions to spread their beliefs in a concise and effective way that people felt were true because they could hold it in their hands.
The proliferation and aquisitionof knowledge made people more aware of their ignorance and in turn curious. In this new age of curiosity mass communication methods were gold dust.
The Gutenburg press was one of the first to use movable set type made from wood. It not only made the printing process more flexable and faster but also cheaper because it printed on paper which was less glamorous than cloth but more paracticle.
Because there were no constraints over what coudl be printed, anything and everything was. The abuse of the ingrained veracity of print cause social, political and cultural dissruption.
Because print was such a desirable commodity, the ability to read increased in close corolation with the proliferation of printed material. Although the middle classes had monopolised education, the spread of knowledge through print created a trickle down effect where knowledge spread to the lower classes.
The invention of the Gutenburg press meant that circulationof knowledge was greater and a scientific way of thinking became increasingly wide spread and a scientific reveloution ensued.
The way people produced print effected the glyph designs and the way we formalised language in a number of ways; the width restrictions we now apply and our organisation of punctuation.
As the standardised visual form of language in print became more and more famillure we became more wawre of each glyphs aesthetic as well as functional aspects. This lead to developing glyphs into decorative designs.
Marshall Macluhan- "The medium is the message"
When considered in relation to print this relates to this idea that the clean cut physical presence of printed type creates a solidity and believabilty to the information being communicated.
The fact that the formalisation of the english language pinns it down to the past, arguably constricts the development of the language and therefore our communication.
As developments in print occurred, especially the move to digital print in the 1970s the printed format become much easier to produce and therefore was found everywhere, arguably reducing its effectiveness of communication and ingrained veracity.
Printing an image started out with entaglio etching, the oldest examples of which are once again to do with spreading religious beliefs.
In the 1800s lithography emerged. This is a process that involves burning an image into stone with acid and because it was so cheap to do it soon became widely used for advertising purposes. However, in the 1870s there was a strong movement against these functional methods, producing beautiful work just for the sake of beauty this included the work of people such as William Morris. At the time there was a strong divide between those that hd money and those that didn't, this movement against functionalism was predominantly just for the upper classes.
As the world was shrinking an far off lands were easier to reach, the dyes and resources from these places influanced the dyes and styles of printed images and many other areas of design.
As these methods were utilised by governments for propaganda posters people became increasingly aware of the power a simple image had over the mind. The simplicity of screen printing a a reproducion method brought image printing to the masses and advertising through print exploded in popularity.
Despite the ingrained verasity of print there were situations where this was and still is abused, the most obvious being the red top newspapers which often foster moral panics and the like. This lead to the standardisation of printed information, opening up another ethicaly questionable situation; does this sacrifice freedom of speach and act as censorship which compromises human rights? Either way it is clear that print in any form can have a huge impact not only on the individual but on a collective society's way of thinking.
The invention of the Gutenburg press meant that circulationof knowledge was greater and a scientific way of thinking became increasingly wide spread and a scientific reveloution ensued.
The way people produced print effected the glyph designs and the way we formalised language in a number of ways; the width restrictions we now apply and our organisation of punctuation.
As the standardised visual form of language in print became more and more famillure we became more wawre of each glyphs aesthetic as well as functional aspects. This lead to developing glyphs into decorative designs.
Marshall Macluhan- "The medium is the message"
When considered in relation to print this relates to this idea that the clean cut physical presence of printed type creates a solidity and believabilty to the information being communicated.
The fact that the formalisation of the english language pinns it down to the past, arguably constricts the development of the language and therefore our communication.
As developments in print occurred, especially the move to digital print in the 1970s the printed format become much easier to produce and therefore was found everywhere, arguably reducing its effectiveness of communication and ingrained veracity.
Printing an image started out with entaglio etching, the oldest examples of which are once again to do with spreading religious beliefs.
In the 1800s lithography emerged. This is a process that involves burning an image into stone with acid and because it was so cheap to do it soon became widely used for advertising purposes. However, in the 1870s there was a strong movement against these functional methods, producing beautiful work just for the sake of beauty this included the work of people such as William Morris. At the time there was a strong divide between those that hd money and those that didn't, this movement against functionalism was predominantly just for the upper classes.
As the world was shrinking an far off lands were easier to reach, the dyes and resources from these places influanced the dyes and styles of printed images and many other areas of design.
As these methods were utilised by governments for propaganda posters people became increasingly aware of the power a simple image had over the mind. The simplicity of screen printing a a reproducion method brought image printing to the masses and advertising through print exploded in popularity.
Despite the ingrained verasity of print there were situations where this was and still is abused, the most obvious being the red top newspapers which often foster moral panics and the like. This lead to the standardisation of printed information, opening up another ethicaly questionable situation; does this sacrifice freedom of speach and act as censorship which compromises human rights? Either way it is clear that print in any form can have a huge impact not only on the individual but on a collective society's way of thinking.
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