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A History of Graphic Design

philip b. meggs

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Book by Meggs

140 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1983

This edition

Format
140 pages, Paperback
Published
December 1, 1999 by John Wiley \u0026 Sons Inc
ISBN
9780471327011
ASIN
0471327018
Language
English

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About the author

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philip b. meggs

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Philip Baxter Meggs was an American graphic designer, professor, historian and author of books on graphic design. His book History of Graphic Design is a definitive, standard read for the study of graphic design.
He has been called the most important historian of design since Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983). In contrast to Pevsner, he published a history of graphic design that went beyond the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One of the first educators to create an overview of the history of graphic design that did not depend exclusively on the traditional structure of the history of the art, Meggs believed that graphic design would need to acquire an adequate understanding of the past and its relation with art.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 80 votes)
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80 reviews All reviews
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mx_ch
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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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.
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DevilKirito
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This is my bible. I use this book as a constant reference for my everyday work.
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Robertest
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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i want to start with something interesting, so i choose this book
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Halalex
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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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.
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krishima
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Incredibly thorough on Western history, but as a teacher of primarily Black and brown students I feel it's light on indigenous and modern BIPOC designers and influences. Consider expanding this in the next edition.
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