Graphic Arts Creation

Graphic arts is a term applied historically to the art of printmaking and drawing. In contemporary usage it refers to the applied trade-skills of a graphic designer or print technician. The term can include the trades of lithography, serigraphy and bindery, among others. Graphic arts as a trade can be traced back to the first instances of the stamped image or word.

Traditional meaning

Graphic art is the process of creating a design on a medium like Rubber, Plexiglas, or other materials in order to transfer the images to the materials of choice such as paper, cloth, wood, metals, and plastics etc.

Early history: Tang Dynasty and Bi Shena

The technique of printing with carved wood blocks appeared about the 7th century, early in the Tang dynasty. It was invented as a way to inscribe thousands of sheets of rice paper with a memoir of a beloved Empress. Every sheet of paper was placed in hilltops and shrines all over China so that her name would never be forgotten.

Movable type was first invented by Bi Shena of the Song dynasty between the years 1041 and 1048. This invention was recorded by his contemporary Sen Koo in his Dreamworld Essays. During the 13-14th centuries, the agriculturist Wang Zen made an important contribution to the development of movable type printing.

Movable type was probably first used in Europe in the mid-15th century by Gutenberg in Germany, who also invented the printing press. This combination then rapidly spread to the rest of Europe, and later the world. Printing became a distinct trade.

• Lithography

Printing process in which the printing surface is neither raised (see letterpress) nor etched into the plate (see gravure), but in which the printing and nonprinting areas exist on the same plane, and printing is effected by means of a chemical process that allows ink to adhere to only the parts of the surface to be reproduced. The process, which was developed in the late eighteenth century, depends on the fact that water and grease repel each other. Originally, the image to be reproduced was drawn on a slab of stone with a grease crayon. The stone was then dampened with water, but the grease from the crayon would repel the water so that, when a grease-base ink was rolled across the stone, the ink would adhere only to the drawing, and the stone would be ready for the application of paper to reproduce the drawing. Lithography ("writing on stone") is accomplished according to the same principle today, but the stone has been replaced by a metal plate and the technology of preparing the plate has become more sophisticated. Lithography is less expensive than either letterpress or gravure printing and is a reasonable alternative, particularly when an order calls for a short run.

• Serigraphy

Color printing method in which ink is forced through a stencil placed over a screen; also called silk screen. A stencil is created for each color. Then, one at a time, each stencil is placed on a fine wire or silk screen. A squeegee is passed over the stencil so that the ink goes on the surface below, except where the stencil prevents the flow of ink. Because this process can be used on any surface, it is ideal for printing messages on T-shirts. Serigraphy is also usually the most economical method of printing small runs of posters and signs.

• Bindery

Bindery refers to a studio, workshop or factory where sheets of (usually) paper are fastened together to make books, but also where gold and other decorative elements are added to the exterior of books, where boxes or slipcases for books are made and where the restoration of books is carried out.

Overview

A large traditional hand bookbinding studio or workshop may be divided into areas for different tasks such as sewing, rounding and backing the spine, attaching the boards to the book and covering the book with cloth or leather. These processes are collectively called forwarding and would be carried out in the forwarding department. This area of the bindery would typically have equipment such as sewing frames, guillotines, board choppers for cutting boards used as covers, laying presses for holding books when being worked on and nipping presses for flattening paper, board, etc.

The process of decorating or titling a book with gold or other metals, and/or different colored pieces of leather, is called finishing and is carried out in the finishing room or department. In a hand bookbindery this area would house the dozens or hundreds of brass hand tools that are used to impress gold patterns and figures onto leather one at a time, as well as the finishing stoves needed to heat these tools. In a more modern or commercial bindery, many decorative elements or letters are stamped onto a book's cover or case at the same time by use of a hot press.

Modern, commercial, bookbinding outfits range in size from the local "copy shop" book binder, using techniques such as coil binding, comb binding and velo binding to factories producing tens of thousands of volumes a day using such processes as perfect binding. The term, bindery, especially in copy and print shops, has expanded to include other forms of paper finishing, such as paper drilling, lamination, and foamcore mounting.

Tools of the trade

* Computers and software
* Process camera work, registration, crop marks & masking
* Cutting edge technologies


See also

* Communication design
* Graphic design
* Printmaking

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