A timeline of developments in printing culture from 1850 to the digital age

Hoskins, Stephen

Abstract

Invited speaker at the Annual Conference of the Association of European Printing Museums (AEPM) held 3-5 September 2010 in Wadgassen, Germany. The conference addressed the question "Collection of today - Towards a critical evaluation of your collections", Hoskins gave a paper addressing the need for a taxonomy for printing. As observed by Alan Marshall (Musee de l'imprimerie de Lyon) in 2008 'in the 1960s, before the extraordinary eruption of digital techniques in the graphic arts, no one, not even the best informed commentator could have imagined the desktop publishing and digital prepress techniques we take for granted...' Forty years later, we are in a position to put the apparently unique phenomenon of the digital revolution into its broader technological, historical and social perspective. However, there has been little analysis of the technical developments, social impacts, and market shifts that led up to the present domination of digital printing. The printing museum offers an entirely appropriate forum for understanding the core events that have culminated in the digital revolution, but individual museum collections in Europe have not been able to keep up with the many strands of technological development, particularly in the Twentieth Century, which have contributed to the predominance of digital techniques in graphic communication. Musee de l'imprimerie de Lyon, Museum Enschede, Haarlem, Museum Fur Drukkunst, Leipzig and Dansmarks Mediemuseum, Odense have agreed for the need for a large research project led by CFPR to address these issues.
During the general assembly of the AEPM Hoskins was elected as President of the Board for the next two years and The Centre for Fine Print Research will host the Annual Conference of the AEPM in 2012.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Annual Conference of the Association of European Printing Museums (AEPM)
• Start Date: Sep 3, 2010
• End Date: Sep 5, 2010
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: digital revolution in print, technical developments, social impacts, market shifts
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/985701
• Publisher URL: http://www.aepm.eu/englisch/downloads/2010aepmhoskins.pdf