The History of Visual Communication

A comprehensive survey of the History of Visual Communication in 10 chapters...

excerpts:

This website, which contains the material of the course VA312, taught at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey; attempts to walk you through the long and diverse history of a particular aspect of human endeavour: The translation of ideas, stories and concepts that are largely textual and/or word based into a visual format, i.e. visual communication.

Visual communication is the communication of ideas through the visual display of information. Primarily associated with two dimensional images, it includes: art, signs, photography, typography, drawing fundamentals, colour and electronic resources. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and graphically oriented usability. It is part of what a graphic designer does to communicate visually with the audience.

from the chapter: Breaking the Grid

The Daguerreotype proved popular in responding to the demand for portraiture emerging from the middle classes during the Industrial Revolution. This demand, that could not be met in volume and in cost by oil painting, added to the push for the development of photography. Daguerreotypes, while beautiful, were fragile and difficult to copy. A single photograph taken in a portrait studio could cost USD $1,000 in 2006 dollars. In 1884 George Eastman developed film, to replace the photographic plate so that a photographer no longer needed to carry boxes of plates and toxic chemicals around. In July of 1888 Eastman's Kodak camera went on the market with the slogan "You press the button, we do the rest". Now anyone could take a photograph and leave the complex parts of the process to others, and photography became available for the mass-market in 1901 with the introduction of Kodak Brownie.