What did ads look like before typograhy was a file you could have in your computer and replicate multiple times?

Another little tour through The History of Design 1890–1959, this time looking specifically at how designers were treating type as an image rather than simply information. Previous post here.

Eugène Grasset, 1893 — beautifully controlled lettering and organic forms.

Toulouse-Lautrec, 1903 — expressive lettering becoming part of the energy of the poster.

Ernst Klimt, 1892 — decorative type working alongside illustration.

Louis Rhead, Harper's Bazar, 1892 — type, image, and ornament interacting as one visual system.

What I love about these references is that the type is part of the image.

Show me one historical typographic composition you’d steal inspiration from today. 👀

The Beggarstaffs' cut-paper posters from the late 1890s — the lettering sits in the gaps the shapes leave rather than on top of them. I still think about that when a wordmark has to live inside a busy pack layout: let the silhouette decide where the type goes instead of the grid.

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Futuristic look with neon blue, electric purple, and dark background for AI feeling

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The dark-background rule is the one I'd want numbers on before committing to it. A big share of the audience is browsing in dark mode, where a dark thumbnail sits against a dark UI and loses its outer edge entirely, whereas the yellow one here keeps its shape in both themes. Do...