4.31

3

Jun 03, 2011

I took a summer class on the History of Graphic Design and had to read this book...not cover-cover, but pretty close. It's the only class I've actually had the time to complete all of the assigned readings for, and I'm really glad I did. This book is the only one of its kind that I've found. I learned so much from it. It's always been very confusing to try to find where our history is (as graphic designers)...Meggs was the first to really pool all the information in one place.

The only qualms I I took a summer class on the History of Graphic Design and had to read this book...not cover-cover, but pretty close. It's the only class I've actually had the time to complete all of the assigned readings for, and I'm really glad I did. This book is the only one of its kind that I've found. I learned so much from it. It's always been very confusing to try to find where our history is (as graphic designers)...Meggs was the first to really pool all the information in one place.

The only qualms I had with this book was that for being a book ON graphic design, they really didn't take great care in designing it too well. The book is long and slightly dull as you'd expect any textbook to get after a while, but the sans-serif made it slightly even more painful, and the layout was very disorganized (figure references don't show up until pages after they're already been discussed, you can read a full spread of straight text -which is agonizing- and then skim through a full spread of pictures, etc). The book is set up to give you a general overview of each movement, so it can be a little frustrating when your favorite designer gets a paragraph of recognition and Herbert Bayer gets ten pages, but in all honesty you can't expect a subjective topic like design to be perfectly aligned with what you view as more important.

All in all, I think its essential for any designer. Just like with painting, it's kinda hard to find your niche when you haven't had a chance to study the renaissance. It's definitely enriched my design background and vocabulary. You have to know your rules before you can break them, but you also have to know your history so you can see why people made the rules in the first place. ...more

4

Sep 26, 2012

I used to teach a course based on this book. The book, while the information contained within is good... is a great example of how to NOT design a book. The layout of the book makes this difficult to read and understand. The entire book is typeset in a swiss sans serif for the body copy. This made it extremely difficult for not only my students to read and comprehend, but also for myself. EVERY halfway decent Graphic Designer knows that body copy is always to be set (for any lengthy publication I used to teach a course based on this book. The book, while the information contained within is good... is a great example of how to NOT design a book. The layout of the book makes this difficult to read and understand. The entire book is typeset in a swiss sans serif for the body copy. This made it extremely difficult for not only my students to read and comprehend, but also for myself. EVERY halfway decent Graphic Designer knows that body copy is always to be set (for any lengthy publication of mostly text) in a SERIF typeface to ease the reader into a flow and continue to advance when reading. My students and myself found ourselves constantly tripping over the fact we were re-reading paragraph lines of text we had already read. The typesetting and layout made advancing through the copy very difficult. Too bad the layout was terrible while the content was of good quality.

Because this book is the only complete book on this subject I was forced to continue to use it. I used this bad layout/typesetting as a prime example of what NOT to do in design. It demonstrated to my students how a good message can be lost in bad design. (And vice versa) This topic generated many a good classroom discussions on the subject. ...more

5

Dec 07, 2010

I absolutely love art history, but am working on my degree in graphic design. This book was a recommended text to supplement a class and it is absolutely the most engaging textbook I've ever read. I do not think there are many other history books specific to design, and there certainly are none that could compare with the depth, detail and quality of information presented in Megg's History of Graphic Design.

4

Oct 17, 2008

Okay, so I didn't read the entire book, but I read enough that I can write a good review of it. This book was my first introduction to Graphic Design. This book should be mandatory for anyone who designs documents, marketing materials, or other medias for the public. It establishes a progressive history of where design ideas came from and what influenced the designers, along with the consequences (good and bad) of their actions. The writing style is easy to follow. My only criticism is that the Okay, so I didn't read the entire book, but I read enough that I can write a good review of it. This book was my first introduction to Graphic Design. This book should be mandatory for anyone who designs documents, marketing materials, or other medias for the public. It establishes a progressive history of where design ideas came from and what influenced the designers, along with the consequences (good and bad) of their actions. The writing style is easy to follow. My only criticism is that the scope often seems narrow in a way that I feel I'm not seeing the big picture, but focusing on the details. Since a book that covers all the details and all of the big picture would be more than I can handle, I do ultimately prefer the style of this book (and know that I have to do more research on the topic to get a more rounded perspective). ...more

4

Oct 20, 2012

An interesting and informative read, as well as inspiring. However, the last couple of chapters start ok but rapidly descend into what seems like a who's who, which becomes a little tedious.

In terms of layout too I found myself flipping backwards and forwards, marrying up images with the text references, which became slightly annoying. Bad design, in a design book?

3

Jul 03, 2017

There is a special place in my heart for big, hard-back, fully colour-illustrated design histories. It brings me its own kind of joy, maybe because it is easier to forget how subjective any historical account must be when the narrative is organised around images. Megg's History provide just that, and on top of this it is also part of that very select club of textbooks which have achieved near hegemonic status. This means you can scoop it for a few quids online, and were you not to finish it will There is a special place in my heart for big, hard-back, fully colour-illustrated design histories. It brings me its own kind of joy, maybe because it is easier to forget how subjective any historical account must be when the narrative is organised around images. Megg's History provide just that, and on top of this it is also part of that very select club of textbooks which have achieved near hegemonic status. This means you can scoop it for a few quids online, and were you not to finish it will still make a great door-stopper.
It does what it says on the tin: a chronological history of visual communication, carefully skirting around the notion of 'art' and focusing on the genealogy of those fields we today associate with graphic design: typography, layouts, logos, posters, branding, etc. This it does by small paragraphs focusing often on individual designers, or sometimes movements, nearly all of which are illustrated with well chosen examples. My only reproach - but then again given the spoke of the volume, it would have been difficult to do otherwise - is that the size of the images does not allow the reader to really grasp the subtleties of many of those, especially when it comes to typography.
The book start with pre-history, moves through a general examination of the emergence of writing, and goes on to consider Greek, Roman and some East-Asiatic traditions. We move to the Middle-Ages, the invention of minuscules and the variations of textura, before reaching the Gutemberg moment, which gets a more thorough examination. XIXth and especially XXth century have pride of place, taking up about half of the book. We conclude with the post-war period, the submersion of the international style and the rise of post-modernism's various strands. The last part examines relatively contemporary evolution, in particular the emergence of those now ubiquitous digital tools.
The period between the Renaissance and the XIXth century is probably one with which many of us are less familiar, and although I was looking forward to it (emergence of humanist type, engraving, etc.) it turned out to be rather dull, a litany of names and events which the author failed at relating convincingly to elements of the designs he presented - something he did well in many other chapters. More characteristically, there was also a complete lack of ties to 'the broader picture' : graphic design is presented as a self-contained and autonomous field, influence at best by technology and the sister disciplines of art and architecture, but how and how much it might relate to politics, religion or science was completely left out. This, again, might be an unavoidable sacrifice for such a project, but it also contribute to make the book extremely repetitive at times, more akin to reading an encyclopaedia than a history.
To sum up: this is a useful and valuable resource for someone either dedicated to the subject, or to someone with already solid bases in visual and design history. For anyone else, it might prove of little interest, except as a reference book to be pulled occasionally out of the bookshelf, in which it is however bound to take much space. ...more

5

Jun 24, 2018

TODO full review:
! Read the fifth edition (2012), which includes updates in Part V until 2010.
+++ Overall, an outstanding overview of graphic design, from prehistory to the digital age. I learned much. Mandatory reading for all interested in design.
+++ Part I, Prologue. Subjects cover: the invention of writing and a concise but deep incursion into the known history of alphabets, up to the highly designed Korean Hangul; the contribution to graphic design Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian TODO full review:
! Read the fifth edition (2012), which includes updates in Part V until 2010.
+++ Overall, an outstanding overview of graphic design, from prehistory to the digital age. I learned much. Mandatory reading for all interested in design.
+++ Part I, Prologue. Subjects cover: the invention of writing and a concise but deep incursion into the known history of alphabets, up to the highly designed Korean Hangul; the contribution to graphic design Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian sources; the contribution to graphic design of illuminators, including the Arabic thread.
+++ Part II, the Renaissance: presents the birth of European typography and image-text prints. Gutenberg, Dürer, Luther are the main figures, with technology for printing enabling so much of the European arts and crafts that characterized the Renaissance.
+++ Part III, the Industrial Revolution, through Arts and Crafts, to Art Nouveau: a good, selective but deep, coverage of creativity between 1760s and 1910s.
++ Part IV, the Modernist Era: the huge factory (Ford) and massive urbanization leads to a new life for many, and art follows (or leads). Cubism (Picasso), Constructivism (Lissitzky), De Stijl (Mondriaan), and Bauhaus (Gropius et al.) lead the modern movement. (Unfortunately, Communism and Nazism appropriate the methods of some of these schools as useful propaganda tools).
+/--- Part V, the Information Age: covers 1940s/1950s through 2010s, but already shows its age. The rise of corporate identity is well covered, but new advances in personal identity, cross-medium branding, manga fetishism, and cross-pollination with gaming do not appear here. Perhaps a new Part VI, FTW? ...more

4

May 31, 2009

Thorough and expansive, not much can be said about this that hasn't been already. There's a reason it's the staple of every graphic design course's reading lists. A must for students.

5

Sep 09, 2009

Read this in college; a previous version. Great reference for designers.

5

Jan 22, 2008

The only text book I was able to read like an actual book (cover to cover). The format, the content, the writing style- it was all top notch and very interesting.

3

Jan 13, 2014

I had to read this book for a History of Graphic Design class. The first part of the book was definitely interesting, but I have to admit that as the semester progressed I skimmed the rest of the chapters. I will have to reread this book in the future to fully appreciate it.

3

Jul 07, 2016

Definitely your typical textbook. Solid info, good to have a cursory knowledge if you're in the industry - I for sure found a few names to go research further. (Muriel Cooper for example; founder of MIT Media Labs, and one of the greatest unsung women designers of recent years!)

3

Dec 15, 2015

Although this book was very informative, I got lost in all of the names, dates, and places. I'm so glad that there were plenty of pictures to offset the text. For a textbook, it would have been nice to have used bold print for important items, like definitions and important people.

4

Dec 14, 2016

Honestly this is more of an encyclopedia than a history and has quite a few blind-spots (it is rarely critical or even intellectual in any way) but is quite useful as a reference for movements and images.

2

Sep 29, 2008

This textbook was boring and dry in my experience and I am no textbook hater. I liked some of the information I learned in the book about Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing machine and also the illustrators of the dark ages.

5

Feb 26, 2016

I been using this book in my graphic design school. Everything in it well explained and with illustrations. On my opinion this is the best graphic design history book which exist nowadays. If you are student, don't hesitate to read it.

4

Jun 24, 2008

I have an earlier version of this book, but this was the book that established who was who in the history of graphic design for me. We had this book in lieu of a graphic design history course at my undergraduate school.

A must read for all graphic design and art history students. I wish it had more images, but I think that about every book. :)

5

Dec 11, 2008

It amazes me that graphic design and designers don't get more respect. (It takes one to know). This book serves well to open eyes to the fact that concerted, skillful design exists all around us... and without the exceptional efforts of those exceptional individuals, we'd be in a world of hurt. ...Sort of makes you think of God, doesn't it?

5

Jun 06, 2012

Very interesting book, had to buy it for a Graphic Design History class, and as a previous poster said I might not sell it back after the class is done. It provided me with a more detailed background on the history of printing and design, type etc. which I knew nothing about, loved the pictures in the book as well. As a Photography major it definitely got me more interested in Graphic Design!

5

Apr 08, 2013

a great read for every graphic designer. it's shame that they teach this book in college very briefly that students most likely hate it enough to never read it cover to cover. this is the kind of book that needs to be read more than one time and kept in proximity as a reference and constant inspiration.

5

Oct 25, 2011

An excellent overview of design from the origins of the word/symbol to nearly the present day. My only quibble is that Meggs drops descriptions of production techniques near the beginning of the 20th century--details that are informative in their own right and help you better understand the underlying art.

5

Jan 18, 2008

The first text in this book, a quote from the Austrian Bauhaus artist Herber Bayer, "the creative process is not performed by the skilled hand alone, but must be a unified process in which "head, heart, and hand play a simultaneous role," guides this exhaustive examination of the graphical development of language through speech, writing, and eventually print and video. Covering most of the major developments in the graphic arts throughout historical times. Extremely comprehensive in scope.

4

Sep 06, 2013

Can’t say I’m a huge sucker for art history, though this book somehow managed to make it pretty interesting. Some parts could be a touch dry, but it covers a lot. It was bought for college and kept for its relevance. For some reason I enjoy having it on my shelf and I don’t even know if I can pin point why? It did not always feel like work reading it ...and I have a hunch I may want to brush up on it again someday. Plus it’s very pretty (referring to the sample images – the book's typesetting Can’t say I’m a huge sucker for art history, though this book somehow managed to make it pretty interesting. Some parts could be a touch dry, but it covers a lot. It was bought for college and kept for its relevance. For some reason I enjoy having it on my shelf and I don’t even know if I can pin point why? It did not always feel like work reading it ...and I have a hunch I may want to brush up on it again someday. Plus it’s very pretty (referring to the sample images – the book's typesetting could use some work). ...more

4

Jun 16, 2014

Before diving into Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, I faced a dilemma. Should I jump right in or should I wait until the fall since the book is required for Graphic Design History class? Once I began the first chapter, however, I couldn’t stop.

With almost 600 pages, the book began with the invention of writing and ended at the digital revolution. The first two parts are fascinating, especially chapters on the alphabets and the progression of print and typography. Part three and four are Before diving into Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, I faced a dilemma. Should I jump right in or should I wait until the fall since the book is required for Graphic Design History class? Once I began the first chapter, however, I couldn’t stop.

With almost 600 pages, the book began with the invention of writing and ended at the digital revolution. The first two parts are fascinating, especially chapters on the alphabets and the progression of print and typography. Part three and four are comprehensive in documenting the graphic design moments and prominent designers. While the layout is filled with rich visual examples to complement the texts, the body copy, which set in Sabon Next, is a bit loose.

The historical details definitely needed to be revisited again, but this is the first textbook that I have read from cover to cover. ...more

1

Oct 13, 2013

The first couple chapters of this book are full of interesting information about the evolution of written language. After that the book bogs down in personal details of the designers' lives. For example, I now know that in the 1700s Bodoni in Italy and Didot in France were rivals in the development of more modern fonts, each borrowing from the other, and both drawing upon the earlier type designs of Baskerville. A lot of words are wasted on telling how so-and-so designer went to so-and-so place The first couple chapters of this book are full of interesting information about the evolution of written language. After that the book bogs down in personal details of the designers' lives. For example, I now know that in the 1700s Bodoni in Italy and Didot in France were rivals in the development of more modern fonts, each borrowing from the other, and both drawing upon the earlier type designs of Baskerville. A lot of words are wasted on telling how so-and-so designer went to so-and-so place at so-and-so time...for the purposes of understanding how various aspects of design history impact present work, the designer's personal lives are of little use to me.

Instead, I would have found it more useful to see a comparison of similar styles with information on how to tell them apart and indications of the sentiment (including culture, time, place, and philosophy) evoked by each. The trivialities that make up much of the text (titles of the works, the names of the designers and their acquaintances, their education, and the names of the publications and presses they worked) for would be far better relegated to sidebars or appendices so that I wouldn't need to slog through them to find the useful information. ...more