Designing information for everyday life, 1815-1914

Some of the most inventive and imaginative designing of the nineteenth century was thrown away. The interactions and transactions of everyday life were conducted through, and recorded by, a host of ephemeral printed documents - eloquent witness to the development of patterns of modern life. Their rich and varied configurations, colours, and texts made-new demands on newly literate audiences. Victorian 'information design' - a graphic equivalent of engineering, and done before the emergence of professional designers - is the most intelligent, but secret, ancestor of today's graphic design. This research reveals and explains what we can learn from it.