What it argues
Meggs' History of Graphic Design is the standard reference text for the history of visual communication, covering the development of writing and printed images from prehistoric cave markings through the digital revolution. First published in 1983 and now in its fifth edition (with Alston W. Purvis), it traces how the tools and technologies of graphic communication — the alphabet, the printing press, photomechanical reproduction, digital composition — have shaped and been shaped by the cultures that produced them.
The book begins with the origins of writing in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, moves through the development of the Greek and Roman alphabets, the illuminated manuscripts of medieval Europe, and the decisive rupture of Gutenberg's moveable type in the fifteenth century. Each technological shift is analyzed in terms of both its technical mechanics and its social consequences. The printing press did not merely make books cheaper; it changed the relationship between knowledge and power, between individual authorship and collective tradition.
What it gets right
- 1.
Graphic design is as old as writing itself. The decisions early scribes made about form, legibility, and hierarchy are recognizably the same decisions contemporary designers make.
- 2.
The printing press was not just a technology but a revolution in information distribution. Its introduction to Europe in the mid-fifteenth century reshaped literacy, religion, science, and political authority within two generations.
- 3.
The Bauhaus synthesized craft, fine art, and industrial production into a unified design education model that still underlies most design curricula worldwide.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Philip B. Meggs (1942–2002) was an American graphic designer, educator, and design historian who spent most of his career at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he chaired the graphic design department. The first edition of Meggs' History of Graphic Design, published in 1983, became the definitive survey of its field and has been revised and expanded by Alston W. Purvis through a fifth edition in 2012. Meggs also wrote Type and Image and A History of the Graphic Design Profession.
