ARTA181 Digital Design & Typography II

Instructor: Traci Anfuso­Young
Main Feature Editorial Focus

Everything Old is New Again

When gathering images for your timeline, please note that in most movements
below, I’ve highlighted names that are appropriate for that movement, look for
*keyword. Images may be research on the web, however, *NOTE: images found on the web
will have poor DPI, completely unusable for your final. Larger images will have to be scanned from book resources.
This feature is inspired from the book, Then is Now, by Rockport, Cheryl Dangel Cullen. Other resources: A History
of Graphic Design, Mertz to Émigré and Beyond, and use the library.

This feature focuses on the “graphic design” of the movements, so wherever

applicable; please use an image that has typography on it.

Headline Options:
Then is Now
Everything Old is New Again
Rights of Passage

Deck: 

Sampling the past for today’s graphic inspirations

Designer’s note: You may choose to write your own headline and deck, just keep it 

appropriate for the goal of the story, and that is “Everything Old is New Again.” Styles 

and art movements from the past play a huge roll in today’s design. We are educating 

designers or those interested in art, “how the past has influenced today.” 
Intro Paragraph:
It may be a cliché, but it has never been as true as it is today. Trends in fashion, movies,
and television clearly tell us that retro is in. Today, collectively, we see design in the 21st
century as a melting pot of past, present and future.
At the turn of the 20th century, a time of great experimentation, the Industrial 

Revolution is in full bloom. This era known for its fundamental change in transportation, 

printing, economic policies, science and social structure, is also the same era that the 

birth of Advertising emerged. Today, at the turn of the 21st century a strong parallel exists. 

Although the word “Revolution” implies, “abrupt change,” it was a slow evolution. The 

same could be said about the revolution/evolution we find ourselves living in today. For 

the thread, which joins all the isms, is its slow evolution from one period to another. 
Graphic designers today take full advantage of mixing the past with the present.
Although not a completely new concept, “an aware designer is connected to culture, and
trend, both past and present, and having a strong historical background will only enrich
an artist’s ability to visually communicate.”
This historical retrospective is designed to enlighten you to the many influential 

design movements, their significant contributions and more interestingly noted, the social, 

economic and cultural parallels of then and now. 
Art movements have built, borrowed and used theory’s and principals that have
evolved throughout time to either enhance the design evolution or in many cases rebel
against the norm, and in doing so — illustrate how art is not created by living in a
vacuum, but that art is a refection of the times.
We ask: If history repeats itself, what revolutionary explosion in the arts are we 

about to face? Where do we go from here?

Callout: “In order to reproduce the past one must first be knowledgeable of it, and, in
order to create a new future, one must know where we came from.”