Front cover image for The origins of graphic design in America, 1870-1920

The origins of graphic design in America, 1870-1920

Ellen Mazur Thomson (Author)
In this book, Ellen Mazur Thomson examines for the first time the early development of the graphic design profession. It has been thought that graphic design emerged as a profession only when European modernism arrived in America in the 1930s, yet Thomson shows that the practice of graphic design began much earlier. Shortly after the Civil War, when the mechanization of printing and reproduction technology transformed mass communication, new design practices emerged. Thomson investigates the development of these practices from 1870 to 1920, a time when designers came to recognize common interests and create for themselves a professional identity

Print Book, English, 1997
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1997