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Often, Ladislav Sutnar is described as the ‘progenitor’ of information design. However, before him there was another great designer to whom this discipline should be grateful. He was the Russian artist, designer, photographer and typographer Lazar Markovich Lissitzky, more commonly referred as EL Lissitzky. During the early 1920s, he designed three books which could be now considered as the early stages of information design. In these books, he introduced the concept of visual programme and functional design, working with shapes and colours purposefully organised and creating a visual unity throughout the pages. In addition, he achieved visual clarity and understanding as a consequence of well-structured ways of organising both typographic and visual information. Below these three books are explained in more detailed.
The Story of Two Squares (1922). First, EL Lissitzky designed the book The Story of Two Squares, in which the main story was a symbolic narrative ‘starring’ by a red square and a black square. When this book was first published in Berlin in 1922, about 2 [Squares] presented a radical rethinking of what a book was, demonstrating a new way of organising typography on a page and relating it to visual images. Colour application was a key element in this book, introducing the idea of colour-coding information.
The Story of Two Squares (El Lissitzky, 1922)
For the Voice (1923). Later in 1923, El Lissitzky created a visual book using a collection of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poems as the main source of information. In this book the 13 most often quoted poems in speeches from supporters of the Russian revolution (1917), were visually presented. The way the information was organised within each page, and how it was coded throughout the whole book could be considered a first step towards functional design. Each poem was synthetically visualised with an icon on the right-bottom side of the page, helping the viewer to know which poem was coming before and after.
For the Voice (EL Lissitzky, 1922-1923)
The Isms of Art (1925). EL Lissitzky and Hans Arp designed the book The Isms of Art, composed of 8 pages with 76 illustrations, and information in three languages (German, French and English). In it, a high amount of typographic and visual information was organised into a cohesive whole based on structural relationships, creating a clear layout. This book was one of the first steps towards the concept of visual programme for organising information.
The Isms in Art (El Lissitzky & Hans Arp, 1925)
The three-column horizontal grid structure used for the title page, the three-column vertical grid structure used for text, and the two-column structure of the contents page became an architectural framework for organising information. Asymmetrical balance, and skilful use of white space are other important design considerations of this work. In addition, he used large, bold san-serif numbers to link the pictures to captions listed earlier in the contents page, thus these numbers became compositional elements.
More recently, Karl Gerstner (1964) introduced the concept of graphic programme to the graphic design discipline, presenting a design method called the ‘morphological box of the typogram’. Gerstner created a systematic method, merging art and science, that is capable of generating a broad range of design solutions in which results are not fixed and the form should and must take its shape in obedience to an order or formula. The method (graphic programme) sets the rules about combining the elements in order to create a design formula. The more exact and complete the formula is, the more creative the work becomes. Beyond the design discipline, the importance of Gerstner’s programme is its conceptual applicability to other disciplines.
Josef Müller Brockmann’s work constitutes another key contribution to functional design, but it deserves a post for its own.
- Gerstner, K., 1964. Designing programmes. In: H. Armstrong, ed. 2009. Graphic Design Theory, reading from the field. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, pp.58-61.
- Gerstner, K., 1968. Designing programmes, four essays and an introduction. 1st ed. London: Tiranti.
- Meggs, P.B., 2006. Meggs’ history of graphic design. Chichester: John Wiley.
Last week I have been ‘diving’ into the history of graphic design and I found amazing works dated from long time ago. Particularly the image below caught my attention, as it is one of the first ways of visual communication developed around 3000 bc.
Pre-cuneiform tablet (Musée du Louvre - Paris)
This graphic writing tablet belongs to the Mesopotamian civilization and it is referred as pre-cuneiform writing. At the beginning, the writing system was logographic and ideographic, which means that signs represented a word or an idea. Signs could be grouped into four categories:
- Pictograms that represent all or part of a designated object;
- Realistic or abstract symbols, that transcribed a concept or an idea whose figurative meaning was not immediately recognisable;
- Numerical signs composed of notches or circles impressed in the soft clay with a round stylus;
- Complex signs formed by adding or combining two signs in order to convey elaborate pieces of information
In addition to the writing system, this tablet can be seen as one of the first attempts of information design. Yes! The way pictograms and signs were engraved in these type of tablets had a logic, and followed a rationale to organise information and improve understanding.
Mostly, these tablets were created with a specific purpose, such as store records or inventory lists, document earnings and expenses, entries and exits of merchandise (foodstuffs, fabric, cattle). In addition, some tablets documented how to raise cattle, others showed how to calculate surfaces and how to tend the fields. It is interesting to see how the different types of information have been organised without an alphabetic writing system. For this, the surface of the tablet was divided into columns and cells, each one containing a single piece of information. Finally, a number indicated by a notch, followed by the name of a person, an animal or a commodity designated by a drawing pictogram completed the information. Pre-cuneiform tablets were part of a sophisticated archive system in which each item of information was meant to supplement another. This means that we need to have a ‘how-to-read-pre-cuneiform-tablets’ manual to have a complete understanding and decipher each tablet. In other words, not a single notch seemed to have been done arbitrary.
The second image I found fascinating is a double-spread of The Gutenberg Bible (1456). This was the first major book printed with a movable type printing press marking the start of the ‘Gutenberg Revolution’ and the age of the printed book. It is undeniable the effort and work that this work conveyed. Just imagine that a single complete copy of The Gutenberg Bible has 1,272 pages, from which most of them were lately coloured by hand. However, apart from its high aesthetic and artistic qualities, the book has superb typographic legibility, a sense of organising information and defining a hierarchical structure of the information.
Double-spread page. The Gutenberg Bible (1456)
Close up. The Gutenberg Bible (1456)
The most valuable factor of these works (and others from similar periods) is that they have been done without advance technologies, but with long hours of dedication and a strong idea. To some extent, I will always think that technology and (even more) digital tools have cheapened our (design) thinking.
