HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

5,000 - 10,000 BC - The first known visual communication, with pictographs and symbols in the Lascaux caves in southern France.

3600 BC - The Blau Monument, the oldest artifact known to combine words and pictures.

105 AD - Chinese government official Ts'ai Lun credited with inventing paper.

1045 AD - Pi Sheng invents movable type, allowing for characters to be individually placed for printing.

1276 - Printing arrives in Europe with a paper mill in Fabriano, Italy.

1450 - Johann Gensfleisch credited with perfecting the system for printing type in books.

1460 - Albrecht Pfister the first to add illustrations to a printed book.

1470 - Nicolas Jenson, considered one of history's greatest typeface designers, sets news standard for Roman type.

1530 - Claude Garamond opens first type foundry, developing and selling fonts to printers.

1722 - First Caslon Old Style font developed, later used for the printing of the Declaration of Independence.

1760 - Industrial Revolution begins, setting the stage for advances in graphic design production.

1796 - Author Aloys Senefelder develops lithography.

1800 - Lord Stanhope invents first printing press made of all cast-iron parts, requiring 1/10 the manual labor and doubling the possible paper size.

1816 - First sans-serif font makes a subtle entrance as one line of a book.

1880 - Development of halftone screen allows for first photo printed with a full range of tones.

1890 - Art Nouveau movement begins and changes design, making its way into all types of commercial design and utilizing all types of art.

1917 - James Montgomery Flagg designs famous "I Want YOU for the U.S. Army" poster. The poster, a self-portrait, was actually an American version of a British poster by Alfred Leete.

1919 - The Bauhaus, a German school of art, is founded, eventually providing the framework for modern design.

1932 - Stanley Morison oversees design of Times New Roman font, commissioned by the Times of London.

1940 - First issue of Print Magazine printed.

1956 - Paul Rand designs IBM logo using City Medium typeface.

1957 - Max Miedinger designs Neue Haas Grotesk font, later renamed Helvetica.

1959 - First issue of Communication Arts printed.

1969 - Douglas Engelbart develops first computer mouse, setting the stage for the future tool of graphic design.

1984 - Apple releases first Macintosh computer, featuring bitmap graphics.

1985 - Aldus, formed by Paul Brainerd, develops PageMaker software. New York firm Manhattan Design creates the MTV logo.

1990 - Photoshop version one released, and physicist Tim Berners-Lee developed the world wide web, along with HTML and the concept of website addresses.