The History of Printing Techniques in Video

Print is an amazing thing that has evolved over centuries from its first recorded evidence at around 3500BC when engraved cylinders were used to make impressions onto clay through to our modern day digital printing techniques, which involve no manual labour whatsoever.

Seeing as print has such a long history and takes a massive amount of time to explain how each of the processes works, we’ve decided to create a collection of the best videos we could find that explain each of the printing processes in the simplest ways possible. We’ve also presented them in chronological order with the dates of when the techniques were first conceived so that you can visualise the evolution of printing from its humble beginnings to now.

Let us know what your favourite printing technique is in the comments section at the bottom of this article.

Woodblock Printing - Year: 200

Bookkake Woodblock Printing from stml on Vimeo.

Movable Type - Year: 1040

Upside Down, Left To Right: A Letterpress Film from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.

Printing Press - Year: 1454

Letterpress from Naomie Ross on Vimeo.

Etching - Year: 1500

Mezzotint - Year: 1642

Making the plates:

Printing:

Aquatint - Year: 1768

Lithography - Year: 1796

Die Kunst der Lithographie from Max Negrelli on Vimeo.

Rotary Printing - Year: 1843

Offset Printing - Year: 1875

Lithography from Richard Masland on Vimeo.

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Hectographic Printing - Year: 19th Century

Hot Metal Typesetting (Linotype) - Year: 1886

"Linotype: The Film" Official Trailer from Linotype: The Film on Vimeo.

Screen Printing - Year: 1907

Moleskine Silk Screen Printing from Moleskine ® on Vimeo.

Spirit Duplicator - Year: 1923

Dye Sublimination - Year: 1957

Laser Printing - Year: 1969

Thermal Printing - Year: 1972

Inkjet Printing - Year: 1976

3D Printing - Year: 1986

3D Printing: A Time-Lapse from Liz on Vimeo.

Digital Printing Press - Year: 1993

The dates of these different printing techniques have been sourced from Wikipedia’s article on The History of Printing which can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing.

The Psychology of Colour in Design Test

Colour is something we all as human beings take for granted as we are born with this fascinating privilege of colourful sight, unless if you’re born blind of course. For the majority of us, colour is a major catalyst of universal design that evokes a wide variety of emotions – although it is perceptual to each individual’s experiences in life i.e. red can be associated to passion and love for one person and mean something completely different to another individual, most likely in another part of the world.

By understanding the environment in which we intend to unleash our designs, we can spark the desired emotional response to create an affinity from consumer to creation – something that many businesses seek to create in order to maximise the sale of their products or services.

For designers in the Western world who intend to release their illustrations on their local demographic, the desire is there to always follow the curve, as businesses do, and create a red heart for example as you know that it is socially acceptable and the affinity to love is expected. But is there something more to be had from confusing the senses of your expecting audience? This is where the study of psychological response to colour can make your design become “off the wall”.

Using the example of the heart, I’ve presented a few images I’ve pulled from Flickr below which show a standard illustrative heart in different colours.

Let me know what your emotional response is to each of them in the comments below telling me which country you’re from so we can see if there’s any difference between nationalities.

 1. Green Heart

2. Red Heart

3. Wood Heart

It will be interesting to see what the results of this psychological test present. I will present an in-depth discussion on the topic following its results in a month's time. Please comment your responses to the designs presented above below.