Designing information for everyday life, 1815-1914: January 2010

Friday, 29 January 2010

Exhibition extended; catalogue now available

Our exhibition at the St Bride Library, London EC4, is extended: now open until Tuesday 16 February.

It will then be at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading, until late March.

A catalogue, Designing information before designers, is available. This 48-page A5 booklet provides details of all of the documents displayed in the exhibition, with colour illustrations and extended descriptions of a selection of them.

£3 to visitors, or £4 including postage & packing within the UK. (Overseas, contact us by email: p.a.dobraszczyk@reading.ac.uk)

Please make cheques payable to ‘University of Reading’, and tell us the postal address for delivery.

Send to:
Paul Dobraszczyk and Mike Esbester
Department of Typography & Graphic Communication
University of Reading
Reading
RG6 6AU

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News & Events

Past events:
February-April 2010: Project exhibition, ‘Designing information before designers’, Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading.
March 2010: Panel contribution to the Open University's Book History & Bibliography Research Group's series on the history of reading.
March 2010: Mike Esbester & Paul Dobraszczyk presented papers at the Museum of English Rural Life, in their lunchtime seminar series.
January-February 2010: Project exhibition & public lecture, 'Designing information before designers', St Bride Library, London.
September 2009: Panel contribution on ‘Designing and reading forms of discourse’, at Writing Design, the annual conference of the Design History Society, University of Hertfordshire.
July 2008: Mike Esbester presented a paper at the Institute of English Studies conference, ‘Evidence of Reading, Reading the Evidence’.
January 2008: Mike Esbester presented a paper to the Design History Seminar at the University of Brighton.
October 2007: Paul Dobraszczyk & Mike Esbester gave papers at the annual conference of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic & Mobility.

Publications

Mike Esbester, ‘Nineteenth century timetables and the history of reading’, Book History 12 (2009): 156-85.

Mike Esbester, ‘Designing time: the design and use of nineteenth century transport timetables’, Journal of Design History 22, 2 (2009): 91-113.

Paul Dobraszczyk, ‘“Give in your account”: using and abusing Victorian census forms’, Journal of Victorian Culture 14 (2009): 1-25.

Paul Dobraszczyk, ‘Useful reading? Designing information for London's Victorian cab passengers’, Journal of Design History 21, 2 (2008): 121-41.

Paul Dobraszczyk, Mike Esbester & Paul Stiff, ‘Designing information for everyday life, 1815-1914’, The Ephemerist 141 (Summer 2008): 7-13.

Designing information for everyday life, 1815–1914

a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading

Some of the most inventive designing of the nineteenth century was thrown away. Many interactions of everyday life were conducted through, and recorded by, ephemeral printed documents. Their rich and varied configurations and texts made new demands on newly literate audiences. Victorian ‘information design’ – the graphic equivalent of engineering, and done before the emergence of professional designers – is the most intelligent, but little known, ancestor of today’s graphic design. Our research aims to reveal and explain what can be learned from it.

We welcome comments from readers on any of the material shown here and on any aspects of our project. Go to the end of each post (usually after the second picture) and click on the 'comments' link.

Designing information for everyday life, 1815-1914

Friday, 29 January 2010

Exhibition extended; catalogue now available

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