19th Century Of Graphic Design

Illustration of the bill posters, pasted on top of each-other, fighting for a position to grab the public attention. The Victorian era was the period in which fly poster typography emerged depicted in the illustration above. The large amount of color in combination with large font sizes were created from movable metal type.

Its proving difficult to to find any facts at all, either online or in the library relating to Victorian typography or advertisement containing facts about the techniques or popularity in design through out the century. Type timeline segment from the 19th century:

1803 Robert Thorne design the first Fat Face.

1815 Vincent Figgins design first slab-serif typeface.

1816 William Caslon IV design first sans serif typeface.

1845 Robert Besley designs the first Clarendon. 

Fat face / Fat face roman is designed by William Thorne in 1820 (Robert Thorne) created the typefaces the company was then brought by William Thorowgood in 1820 after Robert Thornes death. Robert Thorne was the creator of Fat Face founding the style in 1801. William Thorowgood then took over the company in 1820.

Fat Face was the first typeface created for advertising. Its key features are vertical stresses and hairline serifs, the structure of the typeface has thick main body, the ascenders, descenders,bowl etc. are thick in width, the serifs and connecting strokes are thin hairlines and bracketed. Typeface was created for the purpose of advertising it was used in posters and hoardings.

Egyptian/ Slab serif typeface 1817 was designed by Vincent Figgins. The slab serif has a low contrast, design of uniform stroke.

Antique was releases by Figgins in 1825. Modern font equivalent: Egiziano Black.

The anatomy of this typeface is chunky, thick and bold used for headlines in the diameter of the serifs matches the thickness of the main body. There stroke lines on the loops, tail etc. 

Figgins also created the Monotype Ionic typeface, this became used for body text by the news paper industry, designed 1821 it was the model typeface in the 20th century. 

Sans Serif was designed by William Caslon IV and created the Caslon Sans Serif alphabet. This is was the very first sans serif created, its is categorized as a Sans Serif Grosteque.

Robert Besley designed original Clarendon in 1845. It has been described in the 'Letter Information. The anatomy of type. By Joep Pohlen.'

These are some examples of the original design of Clarendon in the late 19th century.

Examples of the Victorian typography.

This is poster created for advertising Oxbridge Fair 1878. The use of large scale type and bold slab serifs in combination with the mixture of black and red, makes the image really yell at the audience.

The Oxbridge uses Antique with a drop shadow, this is used multiple times in the poster, 'fair' again is  the Antique typeface. The poster also uses Caslon's English two line Egyptian and Thorne's Fat Face Roman.

This poster again is a brilliant example of the communication methods of the 19th century. This poster has been printed on basic paper in basic black its a low cost poster. There a mixture of typefaces and sizes. The designer has used Fat Face Roman and Antique typefaces.

This another example from a 1853 Newspaper demonstrating the trend of using  multiple typefaces to grab peoples attention. The example again contains the commonly seen slab serifs used thought out the 19th century.