Graphic design, as a concept, has existed for many, many centuries.

In our moder n lives, we encounter it on a daily basis, from how a news program graphics look s, to how a transit agency decides on the look of the maps that would be install ed throughout their mass transit operations, to a layout of a textbook. Graphic design plays a key role on how the graphic s message is interpreted by the viewer. As with most things, graphic design has changed and morphed over the course of time, expanding into new mediums & new uses that weren t previously imagined. One way to look at the history of graphic design and some of its different forms is by looking back at graphic designs over the past century. Das ist der Weg zum Frieden die Feinde wollen es so! Darum zeichne Kriegsan leihe! , translated from German to English as That is the way to peace The enemies wa nt it so! Subscribe to war loans , is a 1917 poster created by German born, Americ an based, graphic designer Lucian Bernhard. As shown in the poster, the poster m akes use of the typical German, serif-heavy typeface that was common with most p rinted items in German during the time. The poster also displays a closed-clench ed hand, which happens to be covered with some type of armor. A reason for this visual element can be stemmed from the poster s message and the time in which it w as created. The poster was created while Bernhard was serving in the Germany arm y, after being drafted. The poster is in line with other propaganda works that t he Germany army created during the time, as the army and the government attempte d to rally the Germany people behind the country s war efforts. In the case of thi s poster, the government wanted civilians to invest into the war by purchasing w ar bonds. Power, The Nerve Centre of London's Underground is another poster, created in 1930 by American born, (mostly) England-based, artist E. McKnight Kauffer. T he poster shows many different visual cues that all support the idea that this w ork is make in the style of art deco. This can be concluded by Kauffer s inclusion of what appears to be some type of industrial building, with black smoke coming out of the building s tall chimney stacks. Also, the poster also shows a muscular black arm with what appears to be lighting to be coming out of the arm s clenched hands, both of these cues in the foreground of a light yellow background. In al l, poster was created as an advertisement for the London Underground transport s ystem, to convey the power of the Underground. The Man with the Golden Arm is a 1955 poster for the movie of the same nam e. The poster was created by American graphic designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker, Saul Bass. Bass is revered by many for the works in advertising and more significantly, as the founder of the modern title sequence. The Man with the Golden Arm title sequence, along with the poster based on the sequence was viewe d to be very out there , not only for the style of the title sequence, but the focu s it has on the arm. The movie revolves around the main character s heroin addicti on, and the poster reflected that, which brought on a bit of sensation with the public at the time. The poster follows a similar modernist style that was promin ent in the NY design scene at the time. The ruffed, jagged edges, and the use of vibrant colors (in comparison to the International style) both traces back to t raits of the NY School s modernism. The @ symbol has an history that is very much debated on to this day, bu t it s easiest to trace the symbol back to when it was first implemented in modern time, which will be by American programmer Ray Tomlinson in 1971. The @ symbol can be described in many ways, in which your description would manly be based on your interpretation on the origin of the symbol. One can say that the symbol is the letter a with the a overextended, over-curled letter d upstroke moved to th e bottom, another can interpret it as an , with a curved line connecting the acce nt to the bottom of the a. In all, the history as to were the @ originated from continues to be an enigma. As for the modern use of the @ symbol, that would ste m from Ray Tomlinson, as she chose the symbol as a means of making the ability s ending of electronic message easier to code, as he needed a way to distinguish a sender/receiver identifier @ the server the e-mail is coming from/to. The alrea dy pronunciation of the @ as at , as used predominately by accounts, but little els e outside of them, only helped bring the rise of the commonality of the symbol i n our modern, internet connected world, as it was easy to say, easy to identify,

and easy to use on computers, as it already existed on most keyboards for many years. Tetris is a video game created by Russian computer engineer Alexey Pajit nov in 1984. The game was created by Pajitnov while he was working at the Comput ing Center, a division of Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The game has a flat 2 D-design and a simple premise. There are objects called Tetriminos and they come in different shapes. These Tetriminos, when fit together as a complete line, cl ears that line and you earn points. As the lines continue to be cleared, the gam e will incrementally speed up & the game will be a loss when the Tetriminos meet the top of the screen. The design of this game would be grouped with what s calle d New Media, as the medium of this design & interactive did not really exist unt il the age of the Personal Computer. In conclusion, modern design has gone though many changes, trends, and o verall development over the past century. This snapshot of 20th century gives an interesting look at what graphic design represented in different forms and medi ums, and what messages it was used to convey.