History of Communication Design– 18th to 20th century
/ Major Studies /

Lecture by Tomaso Carnetto

From the Middle Ages until today

We propose the following definition: Since its inception in the Age of Enlightenment, the role of communication design has been to shape the discourses and reality of a community according to the prevailing idea of what is right or wrong, good or bad, and to provide the physical or media objects that ensure that the expectations of what is good and right will be realized in the future.

We have five - sometimes very different - perspectives on what it means to become and be a designer for the 21st century. Each perspective is given by the task within each period for what we now call communication design. In other words, we take the perspective of the time (or, more precisely, what we think the perspective must have been, since design is always about expectations for the future) and apply it to our tasks today. The fact that a different task is given in each century (the division is used for ease of understanding) makes it clear that the results of design have in some sense failed in terms of the formulated expectations and thus had to be redefined. Taking into account the disappointed expectations of the last three centuries, we have to ask today what kind of expectations we have to fulfill now. In other words, we have to consider whether the task of fulfilling expectations is even possible.

Before the 18th Century
From an art historical perspective, we can say that before the 18th century, communication design was an obvious part of the arts. If we go back further (in a sense, before Giotto), we will see that what we now call art was an instruction on how to behave, claiming to be objective, in order to ensure the good pleasure of the gods or the one God (which means that it was given by the divine powers themselves). Only with the emergence of the artist as an individual does art become more than an official, God-given instruction.

18th Century
The birth of Communication Design with the “Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts”, the first general Encyclopedia, published in France between 1751 and 1772. Regarding the task, we can say that it is about what we now call Information Design.

19th Century
How the values of the bourgeoisie conquered Europe and the rest of the Western world, using the new mass media of printing, especially magazines (in the form of newspapers and hardcover books). The main task of this period was to initiate and regulate the social behavior, aesthetic preferences, and education of the so-called middle class.

20th Century
The promise of prosperity and a better world for all through consumption was, with increasing intensity (peaking in the 1980s), the main task of design in the last century. To this end, designers developed consumer products for which advertising became the most important communication tool.

21st Century
We need to discuss whether design and the communication content it provides should be based on the tripartite task of Information Design, Thematic Magazines (content and design for print, social media and digital publication) and Consumer Products (including advertising, package design, shop design, etc.), or if the profession is called upon to develop new types of objects or products to be designed, which we propose to call Participation Objects.