Talk:Graphic design/Archives/2020

Historical gallery

I just moved a set of images (which were added to the article in November 2019: see Special:Diff/927500041) from the top of the article to Graphic design § Historical gallery. However, these images seem more relevant to History of graphic design, and I would prefer to see these images moved to History of graphic design by whomever cares to do it. Any thoughts? Biogeographist (talk) 18:37, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

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After more than two weeks there has been no opposition to moving these images, so I am parking them here until anyone wants to integrate them into History of graphic design. Biogeographist (talk) 13:04, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Origin of the "graphic design" term

Contrary to popular belief, it was not W.A. Dwiggins who coined the term "graphic design". Rather, it is Frederick H. Meyer, as demonstrated by design historian Paul Shaw. I will edit the article.--216.162.79.5 (talk) 15:16, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

It's not appropriate to sweep in and declare "popular belief" as nullified with a single source. If the origin is disputed, you can present both sides. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 16:26, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

I've been pinged by Ohnoitsjamie to take a look at this. Shaw knows everything about Dwiggins. The article on his website looks solid to me-and it's a fairly straightforward counterexample to evaluate compared to what the Wikipedia article said yesterday. Claim the Wikipedia article made: Dwiggins coined the term "graphic design" in 1922. Counterexample: here's a guy using the term in 1917. That sounds like set and match, short of forgery. (Obviously, one could imagine that perhaps Dwiggins popularised the phrase, which Kennett suggests. But that's not what the text on our article said, we haven't got sources convincingly demonstrating that either, and indeed Shaw points out that it's not what Dwiggins called himself on numerous occasions where he could have done it.)
Incidentally I'm unconvinced Meyer introduced the term either, although as Shaw suggests he could have codified and defined it. Obviously as it's OR I'm not including these, but I've now searched Google Books and the term pops up sporadically far further back. Oddly, it seems to be most popular in the 1870s, so perhaps independent coinages, which never got far, or non-specialists who didn't use the standard industry terms. Still, the range of people using it is striking. I see it here in a 1917 patent, here a Savannah school teacher in 1875, here an anthropologist in 1870, here in an British magazine for soldiers (about how trig tables might find a market for it-for making enlargements?!) in the same year. I've also seen the claim that Dwiggins invented the term "graphic designer" for the job. Interestingly, that one seems far rarer and I can't find many past precendents for the term, but here's a cartoonist being called that in 1873. (That could be "graphic" in the sense of "expressive", though.)
My experience, frankly, is that graphic design history is full of dodgy coffee-table book histories which make sweeping claims that don't stand up to scrutiny. It's a field where specialist sources beat general ones. I feel it's often been sucked into great man theory writing-that only famous people are allowed to be the first to do anything or coin a name for anything. (The history of graphic design article had a similarly dodgy claim that "it would be possible to consider William Morris the father of modern graphics.") There is excellent commentary on this by Dan Reynolds in his recent doctoral thesis (on the specific topic of font design). Blythwood (talk) 16:51, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Good call on removing the other origin claim. I don't think it's particularly important to attempt to pinpoint the origin of the term. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 21:30, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. I think let's let Shaw's claim that Meyer introduced the term be for now, but I've put it into the article as a terminus ante quem (the Dwiggins claim also showed up further down) and we can see what more comes up and what further buy-in by experts comes up. Personally I think the more interesting question is why and when the term became popular (in the 1940s, I've seen it suggested?) and this is what I would be most keen to see more authoritative sourcing on. Blythwood (talk) 05:44, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

"Design World"?

What is the meaning of the title of the Design World section? Why are both words capitalized? The capitalization suggests the name of an organization or a publication. A periodical titled Design World (OCLC 10190384) was published from 1983 to 1995, but I don't see the connection to the content of the section. The meaning of the section title should be stated in the section, or else the section title should be changed to something more self-evident. Biogeographist (talk) 17:15, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I decided to be bold and change the section title to something that made sense to me. Biogeographist (talk) 17:31, 24 May 2020 (UTC)