Discuss the impact of technology on today’s design world comparing it with the tools available to designers before

computers. The introduction of modern technology has had a great impact on the world of design since the 1980s. Before the invention of the Apple Macintosh and the development of graphical programs for PCs, graphic designers worked only by hand, using techniques such as printmaking, cutting and pasting, silk screening etc. However, the new technology available has changed the design world and made production much cheaper. I will be looking at past and present techniques that designers used for certain designs. For example, the way that Ford advertised their cars over the years. I’ll be looking at what techniques were used for printing and also how I feel that the design has developed since the beginning of the 20th century up until todays adverts from Ford. Firstly, I will be looking at the development of printmaking, starting with the very first printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg. Printmaking began as early as the 1440’s in Germany, when Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press, using metal letters covered in ink and then being pressed down with high pressure on a piece of paper (shown to the right). This dramatically decreased the cost of hand-written manuscript in the world of printing. The first mass produced piece of work using this technique was the Bible. Another style of printmaking is mezzotint, also invented in Germany by Ludwig Von Siegen around the 1460’s. There were two methods that could have been used for mezzotint printing. The most common is known as the dark to light method, in which (typically) a copper sheet of metal is roughened using a rocker, and then the rough areas would be burnished down using metal tools, this creates a lighter tone when printed. Areas that get completely smoothed down come out white. By varying the degree of smoothing, mid-tones are created, hence the name mezzotint – coming from the Italian “mezzo-tinto”, meaning “half-tone” or “half-painted”. The other method is the light to dark method, which uses a smooth copper plate and the areas that are to come out darker are roughened. The printing method is the same for both techniques. The plate is covered in ink, and then wiped down so that ink only remains in the roughened areas and is then put through a printing press next to a piece of paper. An example of mezzotint printing is shown above.

The next printmaking technique is lithography that, again, was invented in Germany by Alois Senefelder in 1798. Lithography used an image drawn/etched into coating of wax or oily substance applied to a plate of lithographic stone as a way to transfer ink to a blank piece of paper. In modern day lithography, the image is coated in polymer, which is applied to a flexible aluminum plate. To use this method to print, the surface of the stone plate is slightly roughened, etched and then divided into hydrophilic regions that accept a film of water, and reject the greasy ink. The image can be printed directly from the stone plate, or it can be offset, by transferring the

image onto a rubber sheet for printing and publication. The lithograph on the left is the “smiling spider” by Odilon Redeon. We are now getting into a more modern era of printmaking, as the next technique I will be explaining is: screen-printing, or ‘silkscreen’ – popularized by Andy Warhol in the 1960’s with his multicoloured print of Marilyn Munroe (as seen to the right). This method is a simple, yet time-consuming effort, which involves the use of a mesh screen, stretched over a frame. Blocking off parts of the screen in the negative image of the design that’s going to be printed creates a stencil, leaving only the open spaces in which the ink will appear on the substrate. Once the stencil has been created, a squeegee is run over the mesh screen, covered in ink, applying the design onto the paper underneath the screen. This is done multiple times using different colours and is then either neatly aligned or poorly aligned on top of each other, depending on what effect the artist is going for.

Now I will be looking at advertisements from Ford from over the past 100+ years and will be observing the development of the technique used and how effective I feel the design is. The first of which is from 1902. This advert was most likely made using a printing press and, I feel, is quite an effective piece of advertising. The text “in the eyes of the Chauffeur” is implying that this car is very fancy, and is also referring to the fact that you can see the car in a reflection from his eyes. As you can see, the only colour in this advert is black; this is due to the way it is printed. It was made using a printing press – which is capable of printing in multiple colours, but would have been very

expensive at the time. This was the most effective way of printing for mass production in these days, as it could be used time and time again before the quality degrades. Here is another from 1910 that was also produced using a printing press. This ad is a lot more straightforward than the other one, showing more information about the car. It’s also showing just the car rather than anything else around it that might distract you from the main focus of the advert – the car. This ad may have been used in a newspaper rather than a flyer/poster like the other advert used from 1902. As you can see throughout the 8 years, not much has progressed in the world of printmaking.

The next advert is from 14 years later, and as you can see is in colour. This advert is using multiple colours, but none that couldn’t be mixed from red, green or blue colourings. There is absolutely no information about the product in this advert, as it was probably in a newspaper or magazine, which most likely had information under the illustration. The technique that was used to

print this advert was most likely a very detailed lithographic technique. The advert, although showing no information on the car, it’s showing the practicality of the product, as the woman driving it is at a market buying groceries. I feel that this advert would have been very good at the time, as it uses quite a few colours and is very detailed, which was not that common at the time that this advert was made.

5 years on, in 1929, Ford produces this advert, which is showing the product as well as features of the car. This advert was published in the magazine ‘Good Housekeeping’. Again, the print was probably made using lithography, and was printed on a canvas-textured paper. This advertisement seems like it would have been good at the time of production, as it has its features listed underneath the main focus of the advert. It shows the owner of the car as outgoing, as well. This could have persuaded people to buy the car, if they thought that owning it

meant that they didn’t have to walk around in the rain as depicted above, by the people standing with umbrellas as the woman in the car has her convertible roof up - showing its practicality. Also the colours are still very basic and are made up of the same base colours that were used when making the image. As you can see, not much changed with the design in 1930 – when this ad was released. The only difference being the placement of the text and how big the illustration is. Again, the colours are very basic and would have been made up from the same base colours, as it was a lot cheaper to do this. The same lithographic technique would most likely have been used to produce this advert, as with the 1929 piece. This ad was also published in the magazine ‘Good Housekeeping’. As there is a horse next to the car in this ad, it is suggesting that the car is the way forward. It could also be suggesting that this car is for the upper class, as the horse is being rode by a child with his/her parents close by to ensure they don’t fall off/and or to teach the child how to ride a horse. Also the house/building that they are next to looks quite fancy and upper class. This would have been an effective advert at the time, as it is using the illustration well and also has a paragraph of text, detailing the features of the car.

This advert from 1941 uses 1 colour and also uses tones of gray to achieve a really nice effect. The car was made to be a different colour that the rest of the picture, as to make it stand out as much as possible and catch the audiences eye. This advert has improved dramatically in quality in just ten years. The work illustration is incredibly detailed and also has six paragraphs explaining the features of the car. The colour red had been used as a tint on some of the figures in the picture, which gives quite an aesthetically pleasing effect. I feel that this advert would have been one of the most successful of the 40s from Ford, as it is a really simple concept that was executed really well by the designer.

This next advert is from 1947 – 6 years later from the previous ad. It looks as though Ford took a more simplistic approach with this advert. Although it’s not as detailed as the previous advert, it still looks like an effective piece of advertising. It lists 8 different kinds of people that this car would suit, which they just generalized over pretty much everyone. The illustration is a lot less detailed than the last piece. Also, compared to the previous advert, this one is very colourful – which would have made it more expensive to produce on a larger scale. Also this looks more like a flyer or a poster rather than something that would have been found in a magazine/newspaper. It also includes the phrase “There is a Ford in your future” at the bottom, which was the tagline used by ford from 1945 onwards for a brief period of time. As we move forwards into 1953, Ford starts exploring different techniques for advertising. This ad from 1953 uses a mix of photography and illustration to show how stylish their car is, and how it will make you feel while you are driving it. The creator of this ad also used an unorthodox script for this design. This is a step into modern advertising by Ford. This advert is very well executed, and probably had a chance of failing at the time due to its outlandish approach. This was probably quite cheap to produce as it only uses black and white for the colour scheme. As you can see, Ford has made many technological advances throughout the years with their advertising. However, it would still be around 30 years before computers are even experimented with for graphic designers. Here is an advert that Ford produced in 1996. This ad was produced using computer technology, and as you will see, looks a lot different to the other designs that I have been looking at.

This advert is using photography. The photograph used has been cropped, and the red has been made the dominant colour, to make the car stand out as much as possible from the background. Also a bit of the car is sticking out into the black bit where the

image was cropped. This was achieved because of todays technology. Obviously this could also have been done before computer technology, but it would require a lot of time, and a very steady hand to get it perfect. Using programs like Photoshop, this is a simple process – considering what is being edited. The next advert was also produced using computer technology. This ad was made in 2011, only two years ago. You can see the huge difference from all of the other adverts that I have talked about previously. The photograph used is at a very high resolution, and is very detailed. The image shows the car in colour, as well as some of the dirt being lifted by the tires. The rest of the background image has been de-saturated. The designer also used a different style for the text used in the image. The words that the designer wanted to stand out are in a blue/grey colour. This is making the words “look super” to stand out in the advert, which at first glance is all you would see, as well as the vehicle. This is a very nice looking advert and is substantially better than pretty much all of the other adverts that I have listed above. Although this would have been easier to create, the photograph would still have been very difficult to capture, and probably took 2-3 days of photographing the vehicle, and then most likely only got 5-10 photographs that would have been good enough to use. Ford has been advertising for over 100 years, and the difference between then and now is stupendous. I feel that advertising, nowadays, is a lot better than it was 30+ years ago. With the advances in technology, advertising has become a lot more aesthetically pleasing, and overall just better due to people studying what styles have the biggest impact on sales etc. I feel that the impact that technology has had on today’s design world is huge. Computers have broadened the ability of designers, and it has also broadened the amount of people that wish to be designers because there are no health risks, and it is very simple to get a hold of some editing software. However, creating an image that people will like is the difficult part, which is why the internet has had some negative effects on today’s design, as it’s easy to just take someone else’s work and label it as your own. With programs like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, you can achieve the same look and feel to a design more efficiently and quickly and not necessarily sacrifice quality. The Internet has also changed the world of current day design. The Internet has created a new medium for designers to show their work off, similarly with the Internet, the designer can also collaborate with other designers quickly and efficiently, and can gain constructive criticism almost instantly from someone from the other side of the world. However, with the Internet comes plagiarism. People can just simply take other peoples work on the internet and just save it as their own and there

is effectively nothing that you can do to stop them unless you are constantly searching for your own work. The impact that technology has had on today’s design world is huge. It has, mostly, had a positive impact on the way that designers work in many ways. I would say that the best impact that technology has had on designers is how easy it is to send work to a client, and how easy it is to print without spending a lot of money for different colours. As well as saving time in the workplace, a huge upside to technological advances is that designers don’t have to breathe in toxic fumes from using rubber cement and other various solvents that are harmful used in the process of design. Here are some examples of work that I have made as a contemporary designer using computers:

I made this image using a very modernized technique. The photograph was captured using a DSLR camera, and was imported into Photoshop, where I edited it to get the look that I wanted to achieve.

For this image, I used a mixture of techniques. Firstly, I etched the image onto a piece of plastic and then printed it with a press. I then scanned the image

and coloured it using Photoshop, giving it a cartoon style look.