Graphic arts

Johannes Gutenberg

The concept of graphic arts refers to the production of all kinds of visual elements, mainly engraving and drawing techniques, although the term is usually restricted to techniques related to printing. In a more general way, it covers the various techniques and procedures for making prints and, by extension, any reprography system to capture artistic creation. Therefore, the term encompasses the set of trades, procedures or professions involved in carrying out the graphic process, traditionally developed on paper.

Currently we can include digital printing in this term due to the great technological development that has occurred in recent years.

History

The term graphic art began to be used after the invention of the printing press that is attributed to Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, as a way of grouping all the trades related to typographic printing, that is, the accommodation of types, the printing, binding, finishing and all variants or additional processes.

Later, lithography appeared, a printing system developed by Aloys Senefelder, who, knowing that water and oil naturally repel each other, used a limestone and a wax bar to make an impression, thereby revolutionizing the arts. graphics. Over time, the stone was replaced by a sheet of aluminum or zinc.

Due to the urgent need to generate better quality prints, pre-press or photomechanics appeared. This new part of the printing process used large pre-sensitized film developing machines and special cameras to divide the colors of the images through the use of special filters that printed the separate spectrums of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow on a negative. and Black. This set of colors is known in the field of Graphic Arts as CMYK (for its acronym in English: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key; this last term, Key, means "key" and refers to the impression of black and the depth that it will give to the resulting colors in the print). This printing technique is known as Color Selection. However, there is also another technique used in Offset printing, called Color Separation.

The evolution continues towards Offset printing, which significantly improves the quality of printing by using an indirect system, with three cylinders or main drums: Contra Drum, Printing Drum (Rubber or Blanket) and Sheet or Plate Drum.

Later, other forms of printing were coined such as screen printing, flexography, gravure or rotogravure, among many others.

Currently digital printing is included, thanks to technological advances and new technologies, the processes that were needed to carry out a job have been reduced. Nowadays, when talking about art in the graphic arts, reference is made almost exclusively to graphic design, because the rest has ceased to be art to become technique.

Applications

Graphic arts are currently used as a means of advertising dissemination. Graphic arts being an important means of advertising dissemination through posters, packaging, boxes, logos and images that are not only found in the physical world but virtually on the Internet and basically anywhere we direct our gaze.

The most common means to apply the various graphic arts techniques are:

• signs and signs
• containers and boxes
• bottles and containers
• tags
• Indumentary

The main printing systems are: Offset, Screen Printing, Flexography, Gravure, Letterpress Printing and Digital Printing. On the other hand, the Binding and the finishes include: cuts, pleats, pre-picked and folded to the substrate (paper or other), among more types of finish.

Related Topics

• calligraphy
• color (RGB and CMYK)
• drawing and illustration
• web page design
• editorial design
• graphic design
• binding
• flexography
• photography
• photomechanics
• photomontage
• recorded
• hole
• graphic humor
• printing
• lithography
• ofset
• method Santana
• Painting
• Serigraph
• sublimation