The words of design

166 words for describing an object: materials, techniques, construction, forms, ornament, styles and typography. Short explanations, with links to objects, detail drawings and periods in the app.

Solid wood: Wood sawn from the log and not veneered: the piece is the same timber all the way through. Solid wood moves with humidity, so tops and panels must be able to shrink and swell without splitting.

Veneer: A thin sheet of wood glued onto a carcass of cheaper timber. Veneer allows expensive, finely figured woods to be used sparingly. Older hand-sawn veneer is several millimetres thick; machine-cut veneer is often under a millimetre.

Burr: Wood with irregular, swirling figure from knots and disturbances in the tree’s growth. Masur or Karelian birch was a favourite veneer in the Swedish Karl Johan style and in Biedermeier.

Mahogany: A reddish-brown, close-grained and easily worked tropical timber from the West Indies and Central America. It became the fashionable wood in England after the 1720s and marks Chippendale’s furniture, Empire and the Karl Johan style.

Moulded plywood: Thin veneers glued in layers and pressed in a mould until the glue has set. The laminated wood is strong and can take softly curved forms, which furniture designers exploited from the 1930s.

Tubular steel: Drawn steel tube, often chrome-plated. Marcel Breuer began making furniture from tubular steel in the mid-1920s, and the material became modernism’s sign of light, industrially made furniture.

Bakelite: The first fully synthetic plastic, patented by Leo Baekeland in 1909. It sets hard in the mould, resists heat and was used for radio cabinets, telephones, switches and lamp holders. Usually dark brown or black.

ABS plastic: A tough, glossy thermoplastic that can be injection-moulded to very fine tolerances. LEGO bricks have been made of ABS since 1963.

Aluminium: A light metal that does not rust and became cheap in the early twentieth century. It is cast, pressed and turned, and was used for kitchenware, furniture and aircraft. The Moka Express is cast in aluminium.

Porcelain: Ceramic made of kaolin, feldspar and quartz, fired at around 1,300–1,400 °C until it is hard, dense and translucent. Porcelain came from China; in Europe it was first made at Meissen around 1710.

Bone china: An English porcelain with bone ash in the body, which makes it white and translucent but less brittle. It was developed in England around 1800.

Faience: Earthenware covered with a white, opaque tin glaze that is painted on. Faience imitated Chinese porcelain; Delft, Rörstrand and Marieberg are well-known makers. Where the glaze has chipped, the red or buff body shows.

Creamware: A light-coloured, hard and thin earthenware with a clear glaze, developed in England in the eighteenth century. Wedgwood’s Queen’s Ware of the 1760s made it everyday tableware across Europe.

Stoneware: Ceramic fired so hard, at around 1,200–1,300 °C, that the body vitrifies and becomes watertight without glaze. Unlike porcelain, it is not translucent.

Jasperware: An unglazed, stained stoneware that Josiah Wedgwood developed in the 1770s, usually blue or green with white reliefs in the antique style.

Lead crystal: Glass containing lead oxide, which makes it heavier, clearer and more brilliant. George Ravenscroft took out a patent for lead glass in the 1670s. In the EU, lead crystal must contain at least 24 per cent lead oxide.

Cristallo: The clear, thin soda glass developed by the glassblowers of Murano in the fifteenth century. It could be shaped into thin, intricate goblets but was too fragile for deep cutting.

Opal glass: Milky white, translucent glass that diffuses light evenly. It was used for lamp shades from the nineteenth century and became typical of modernist lighting, such as the Bauhaus lamp.

Sterling silver: Silver of 925 parts per 1,000; the rest is usually copper, which makes the metal harder. Swedish silver long had a lower standard, 830 parts per 1,000.

Nickel silver: An alloy of copper, nickel and zinc that looks like silver but contains none. Also called German silver, it is often silver-plated for cutlery (EPNS).

Pewter: A soft, grey-white tin alloy that melts at a low temperature and is cast in moulds. Everyday pewter often contained lead. Pewter jugs and plates were common in homes before porcelain.

Brass: A yellow alloy of copper and zinc that is easy to cast, turn and polish. It is used for chandeliers, candlesticks, mounts and instruments.

Cast iron: Iron with a high carbon content, cast in sand moulds. It is hard but brittle, spreads heat evenly and is used for pots, ranges, stoves and garden furniture.

Enamel: Glass fused onto metal at a high temperature. Enamel protects and colours the surface of everything from jewellery and scent bottles to cast-iron pots and signs.

Lacquer: In East Asia, the sap of the lacquer tree, applied in many thin layers and polished to a hard, glossy surface. In Europe it was imitated with varnishes, a craft known as japanning.

Chintz: Glazed, painted or printed cotton from India with floral patterns. Chintz became so popular in Europe in the seventeenth century that France and England banned it for a time to protect their own weavers.

Gilt leather: Leather with silver leaf under a yellow varnish so that it shines like gold, and with embossed and painted patterns. It was used as a wall covering in grand rooms in the seventeenth century.

Turning: Wood or metal is rotated on a lathe while a cutting tool shapes it. Turned legs, balusters and spindles are recognisable by being round and symmetrical about an axis.

Bentwood: Wood softened with steam and bent in a mould where it dries. Michael Thonet developed the technique for series production; chair no. 14 of 1859 sold in tens of millions.

Intarsia: Pictures and patterns in woods of different colours set into recesses cut in a solid surface. The word is often used for any inlay in wood.

Marquetry: Patterns of veneer pieces in different woods fitted together into a single sheet of veneer and glued onto the furniture. The technique reached its height with the French and Swedish cabinetmakers of the eighteenth century.

Boulle work: Marquetry of tortoiseshell and brass, sometimes with pewter, named after André-Charles Boulle, cabinetmaker to Louis XIV. Two sheets are cut together, giving a pattern and its negative.

Gilding: Thin gold leaf is laid onto a surface. On wood the gold is laid on a ground of gesso and glue and can be burnished bright; metal was long gilded with mercury over fire.

Ormolu: Cast, chased and fire-gilt bronze, especially the mounts and ornaments on French furniture, clocks and candlesticks of the eighteenth century and Empire. The word comes from the French or moulu, ground gold.

French polish: Shellac dissolved in spirit is rubbed on in many thin layers with a pad. The surface becomes deeply glossy. The technique was common on nineteenth-century furniture.

Raising and repoussé: Silver or other sheet metal is shaped with hammers over stakes and punches, either into a vessel or into relief decoration worked from the back.

Planishing marks: Small, visible dents from the hammer left in the metal surface. The Arts and Crafts movement and Georg Jensen liked to show them as a sign of handwork.

Sheffield plate: A copper ingot with a thin layer of silver fused to it, rolled out into sheet, invented in Sheffield around 1743. Where the silver has worn, the copper shows. The method was replaced by electroplating after 1840.

Electroplating: A thin layer of silver is deposited on an object of cheaper metal by electric current. The method was patented by Elkington in Birmingham in 1840 and made the look of silver cheap.

Hallmarks: Marks showing that silver or gold is of the right standard. Swedish silver has a maker’s mark, town mark, date letter (since 1759) and control mark, from 1912 three crowns. Together they date and place the object.

Cabinetmaker’s stamp: In Paris, from the mid-eighteenth century until 1791, cabinetmakers had to stamp their names on their furniture, together with the guild’s control mark JME. Stockholm cabinetmakers stamped their work in a similar way.

Mouth-blowing: The glassblower gathers molten glass on a blowpipe and shapes it with breath, tools and turning. Under the foot of older glass the pontil mark often shows, where an iron rod was attached while the glass was shaped.

Pressed glass: Molten glass is pressed with a plunger into a metal mould. The technique came from the United States in the 1820s and made patterned glass cheap. Mould seams and soft edges distinguish pressed from cut glass.

Cased glass: Glass with one or more layers in other colours, cut, engraved or etched through so that the pattern appears. Émile Gallé and the glassworks of Nancy made the technique famous as cameo glass.

Graal: A technique from Orrefors, 1916: a coloured cased blank is cut or etched with a pattern, reheated and encased in clear glass, so that the pattern lies within the wall.

Glass engraving: Patterns and pictures are ground into the surface of the glass with small rotating copper wheels and abrasive. Engraving became an art in Bohemia around 1600 and is still practised today.

Air twist: Spirals of air inside a glass stem, formed when air bubbles are drawn out and twisted. They are typical of English wine glasses from about 1740 to 1770.

Glass cutting: Facets and patterns are cut into the glass with rotating wheels and polished. Lead crystal refracts the light in the cut surfaces; diamond cutting gives crossed cuts like small pyramids.

Millefiori: Italian for a thousand flowers: slices of glass canes with patterns in cross-section are packed together and fused. The technique is Venetian and was used in French paperweights in the 1840s and 1850s.

Throwing: Clay is shaped by hand on a rotating potter’s wheel. Thrown vessels are round and often have fine rings inside from the fingers.

Glaze: A thin layer of glass that fuses onto the ceramic in the firing. The glaze makes the body watertight and can be glossy, matt, coloured or clear.

Underglaze painting: The decoration is painted on the unfired or biscuit body and then covered by the glaze, which protects it. Cobalt blue survives the high firing, which is why so much porcelain is blue and white.

Transfer printing: An engraving is printed on paper that is pressed against the ceramic so that the colour is transferred. The technique appeared in England in the 1750s and made decorated services cheap; the Willow pattern is the best-known example.

Raku: Japanese ceramics shaped by hand and fired at a low temperature, developed in Kyoto in the sixteenth century for the tea ceremony. Western raku is taken glowing from the kiln, which gives crackle and metallic surfaces.

Lustre: A thin, iridescent film of metal – usually silver or copper – formed in a special firing without oxygen. Lustre came from Islamic ceramics and was taken up in Spain, Italy and by William De Morgan.

Crazing: A network of fine cracks in the glaze, caused when body and glaze shrink by different amounts. Sometimes a fault of age, sometimes a deliberate effect (crackle), as in certain Chinese ceramics.

Block printing: Patterns are printed on fabric or paper with carved wooden blocks, one block for each colour. Small misalignments where the blocks meet distinguish hand from machine printing. William Morris printed his fabrics and wallpapers this way.

Jacquard loom: A loom in which punched cards control which warp threads are lifted, so that even complex patterns can be woven mechanically. Joseph-Marie Jacquard developed it in the early nineteenth century; the punched cards became a model for early computers.

Rya: A Nordic knotted rug with a long pile. The rya was first a warm cover for beds and boats and became an artistic wall rug in the twentieth century.

Rölakan: A Swedish weaving technique from Skåne in which the weft entirely covers the warp and is laid area by area, giving geometric patterns with stepped edges.

Damask: A weave in which the pattern appears as the surface alternates between glossier and more matt areas in the same colour. Linen damask has long been used for tablecloths and napkins.

Tapestry: A hand-woven pictorial textile in which wefts of different colours form the image and completely cover the warp. In Swedish it is named after the Gobelins manufactory in Paris, which became royal in the 1660s.

Injection moulding: Molten plastic is injected under high pressure into a steel mould and sets in seconds. The mould is expensive, but each object is cheap and exactly like the last.

Seat rail: The frame under a seat or tabletop that ties the legs together (on a table, the apron). Its shape and decoration help to date a piece of furniture.

Mortise and tenon: A basic woodworking joint: a tenon cut on one part fits into a mortise in the other and is glued. A through tenon can be wedged and left visible, as in Arts and Crafts furniture.

Dovetail: A joint in which fan-shaped pins and tails interlock, best known from drawer corners. Hand-cut dovetails are few and irregular; machine-cut ones, from the late nineteenth century, are many and identical.

Dowel peg: A wooden peg driven through a tenon to lock the joint. Visible pegs are common in older furniture, where glue alone was not trusted to hold.

Frame and panel: A construction in which a thin board, the panel, sits loose in grooves in a frame. The panel can shrink and swell without the door or side splitting.

Spindle: A slender, straight member in a chair back or railing, turned or square. The back of a Windsor chair consists of spindles set directly into the seat.

Splat: The broad, often pierced central part of a chair back. Chippendale chairs with splats of ribbons, interlacing and Gothic arches are typical of English rococo.

Cantilever chair: A chair without back legs that stands on a single bent tube and springs when you sit down. Mart Stam, Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer made the first ones in tubular steel in 1926–1928.

Flat pack: Furniture shipped in parts and assembled by the buyer. Thonet shipped chair no. 14 in parts as early as the nineteenth century, and the idea later became the basis of many furniture companies.

Stackable: Designed to be stacked and take up little space. Kaj Franck’s Kilta tableware and Verner Panton’s chair are well-known examples.

Cabriole leg: An S-curved furniture leg that swells outwards at the knee and inwards towards the foot, after an animal’s leg. It is typical of rococo and the English Queen Anne style.

Ball and claw: A furniture foot in the form of a bird’s or dragon’s claw gripping a ball, common in English and American furniture from about 1720 to 1780.

Sabre leg: A chair leg that sweeps backwards like a sabre blade, after the ancient Greek klismos chair. It is typical of Empire, Regency and the Karl Johan style.

Bombé: French for swelling: a commode or cabinet whose front and sides bulge outwards. The form is typical of rococo and required skilled cabinetmakers and veneerers.

Baluster: A turned form that swells and narrows like a vase. Baluster-shaped legs, stems and posts belong especially to the baroque.

Commode: A low piece of furniture with drawers one above the other (in Britain also a chest of drawers), which replaced the chest around 1700. Its legs, front and mounts are among the best clues for dating furniture.

Secretaire: A piece of furniture with a fall-front writing surface and small drawers and pigeonholes behind, often with drawers below and a cabinet above.

Armchair: An upholstered chair with arms. The Swedish word fåtölj comes from the French fauteuil.

Bergère: A deep, upholstered French armchair with closed sides under the arms and a loose cushion, typical of rococo and the Louis XVI style.

Canapé: A sofa with an exposed wooden frame, often in the same style as the chairs in the room. In Sweden the Gustavian canapé is a well-known example.

Daybed: A sofa for reclining on during the day. The French Empire version, with scrolled ends, is called a récamière after Juliette Récamier.

Windsor chair: An English stick chair in which the legs and back spindles are fixed directly into a thick seat of solid wood. The type existed from the early eighteenth century and spread to America.

Mantel clock: A clock that stands on a commode, console or mantelpiece, often in gilt bronze or marble. Gustavian mantel clocks were made in Stockholm after French models.

Tureen: A large, deep bowl with a lid for soup or stew, often the centrepiece of a service. Rococo tureens could be shaped like vegetables, animals or birds.

Goblet: A drinking vessel on a foot, often with a cover, made of glass or metal. Goblets were given as gifts and used on festive occasions.

Tiled stove: A tall stove of tiles with flues that run back and forth and store the heat. Carl Johan Cronstedt and Fabian Wrede developed the more efficient Swedish tiled stove in 1767.

Sconce: A wall candleholder, often with a mirror or polished plate behind the candle to strengthen the light.

Flacon: A small stoppered bottle for perfume or scented water, often of cut glass, crystal or porcelain.

Watch case: The case that protects the movement. Its shape, material and size help to date a wristwatch.

Chronograph: A watch with a built-in stopwatch function, started, stopped and reset with pushers on the case.

Quartz watch: A watch in which a quartz crystal vibrating at a steady frequency regulates the timekeeping. The Seiko Astron of 1969 was the first quartz wristwatch on sale.

Rocaille: An asymmetrical ornament of shell and rock forms in C- and S-curves, which gave rococo its name.

Acanthus: A stylised leaf of the acanthus plant, with deeply cut edges, used as ornament since antiquity – on capitals, furniture and silver.

Palmette: A fan-shaped ornament of leaves radiating from a point, taken from antiquity and common in neoclassicism and Empire.

Swag: A hanging festoon of flowers, leaves or drapery used as ornament. Swags are common in neoclassicism and the Gustavian style.

Medallion: An oval or round frame for a picture or ornament. The oval medallion back is typical of Gustavian chairs.

Bead moulding: A moulding with small beads in a row, sometimes alternating with elongated shapes (bead and reel). The ornament comes from antiquity and was common in neoclassicism.

Fluting: Parallel vertical grooves in a column or leg. Fluted legs are typical of the Louis XVI style and the Gustavian style.

Chinoiserie: European fantasies of China in decoration and interiors: pagodas, figures, birds and lacquer. Chinoiserie was especially popular in the rococo period, as at the Chinese Pavilion at Drottningholm.

Arabesque: An ornament of scrolling tendrils and leaves in a continuous, symmetrical pattern. It comes from Islamic art and was much used in neoclassicism.

Trompe-l’œil: French for deceive the eye: painting that makes a flat surface look three-dimensional, such as painted panels, marble or niches.

Whiplash line: An undulating, S-shaped line that lashes like a whip. It is the hallmark of Art Nouveau in everything from wrought iron to posters.

Paisley: A teardrop-shaped motif with a curved tip, from shawls made in Kashmir. The pattern takes its name from the Scottish town of Paisley, where imitations were woven in the nineteenth century.

Toile de Jouy: Cotton printed in one colour with scenes of landscapes and people, after Oberkampf’s factory at Jouy-en-Josas outside Paris, founded in 1760.

Kurbits: A stylised, luxuriant plant in Swedish Dalecarlian painting, after the gourd that according to the Bible grew up over the prophet Jonah. It fills the space around the figures in Dalecarlian paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Rosemaling: Norwegian folk decorative painting with stylised flowers and scrolls, on chests, cupboards and walls, from the mid-eighteenth century.

Monogram: Initials interlaced or combined into one sign. Monograms marked silver and linen and later became trademarks, such as Louis Vuitton’s from 1896.

Pattern repeat: The part of a pattern that is repeated on fabric or wallpaper. The size of the repeat and how it is offset determine how the pattern looks when it covers a whole wall.

Baroque: The style from about 1600 to 1720: heavy, symmetrical and sculptural, with baluster legs, gilding, carving and splendour. In France associated with Louis XIV.

Rococo: The style from about 1720 to 1775: light, asymmetrical and curving, with rocailles, cabriole legs and pale colours. In France the style of Louis XV; in Sweden that of the Age of Liberty.

Neoclassicism: The style from about 1760 to 1810 that took up the forms of antiquity after the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii: straight lines, fluting, urns and medallions.

Gustavian style: Swedish neoclassicism, named after Gustav III, roughly 1770–1810. Straight, fluted legs, oval backs and furniture painted pale grey.

Empire: The style around Napoleon’s empire, roughly 1800–1830: monumental and symmetrical, with mahogany, gilt bronze and motifs from Rome and Egypt.

Karl Johan style: Swedish Empire, named after Karl XIV Johan, roughly 1810–1850. Heavy, glossy mahogany and birch surfaces and gilt ornaments.

Biedermeier: The bourgeois style in Germany, Austria and the Nordic countries from about 1815 to 1850: simple, comfortable furniture in light woods such as birch, cherry and pear.

Swedish folk art (allmoge): The objects and crafts of the Swedish countryside, mainly of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: painted furniture, textiles and tools made at home or by local craftsmen.

Historicism: The nineteenth-century use of earlier styles – Gothic Revival, Neo-Renaissance, Rococo Revival – often mixed. Industry could now produce richly decorated objects cheaply.

Arts and Crafts: A British movement from the 1860s around William Morris and John Ruskin that sought to restore good craftsmanship against the cheap goods of industry. Honest construction and visible joints.

Art Nouveau: The style of about 1890–1910 with organic, flowing lines and motifs from nature. It is called Jugend in Sweden, Jugendstil in Germany, Liberty in Italy and Secession in Vienna.

Wiener Werkstätte: A workshop for applied arts in Vienna, 1903–1932, founded by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser. Geometric forms, grids and black and white.

Deutscher Werkbund: A German association of designers, architects and manufacturers founded in 1907 to raise the quality of industrially made goods. It inspired the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design and the Bauhaus.

Bauhaus: The German school of art and design, 1919–1933, in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin. The Bauhaus united art, craft and industry and stands for simple basic forms and new materials.

Art Deco: The elegant, geometric style of the 1920s and 1930s, named after the Paris exhibition of 1925. Costly materials, stepped forms, sunbursts and zigzags.

Functionalism: Modernism in design and architecture, with form following purpose, no ornament and industrial production. In Sweden called funkis, with its breakthrough at the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930.

Swedish Grace: The elegant Swedish neoclassicism of the 1920s. An English critic gave the name to the Swedish contributions to the Paris exhibition of 1925, such as Orrefors’ engraved glass.

Streamlining: Rounded, teardrop forms borrowed from aircraft and trains, which American industrial designers of the 1930s gave even to objects that never move, such as toasters and pencil sharpeners.

Scandinavian design: Nordic design after the Second World War: light wood, simple forms and objects for everyday life. The term caught on with the exhibition Design in Scandinavia in the USA and Canada, 1954–1957.

Mid-century modern: A later term for design of roughly 1945–1970, with organic forms, teak, moulded plywood and new plastics.

Organic design: Soft, body-hugging forms inspired by nature. The term took hold through the competition Organic Design in Home Furnishings at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940.

Space age: Design of the 1960s shaped by space travel: spheres, capsules, glossy plastic, white and silver and strong colours.

Postmodernism: A reaction against modernism from the 1970s: colour, irony, symbols and borrowings from history instead of pure function.

Memphis: A design group in Milan around Ettore Sottsass, with its first exhibition in 1981. Strong colours, patterned laminates and playful, geometric forms.

Mingei: Japanese for the crafts of the people: a movement founded by Yanagi Sōetsu in the 1920s with the potters Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō to champion anonymous everyday objects.

Form follows function: The architect Louis Sullivan’s phrase of 1896 that form should follow from purpose. It became a motto of modernism.

More beautiful everyday things: The title (Vackrare vardagsvara) of Gregor Paulsson’s pamphlet of 1919, published by the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design, which urged artists to design industry’s everyday goods.

Gute Form: German for good form: the ideal of simple, durable and functional objects after Max Bill’s exhibition Die gute Form of 1949, associated with the Ulm School and Braun.

Gesamtkunstwerk: German for total work of art: a room or house in which everything, from the architecture to furniture, textiles and cutlery, is designed as a whole, as by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Josef Hoffmann.

Industrial design: The design of objects made in series in factories. Peter Behrens’s work for AEG from 1907 is often seen as the beginning; the profession grew up in the 1920s and 1930s.

Ergonomics: The study of how objects and workplaces are fitted to the human body and its abilities, so that they are safe and comfortable to use.

Planned obsolescence: Designing a product so that it wears out, breaks or goes out of fashion after a certain time, so that the customer buys a new one. The light-bulb makers’ cartel of 1924 is a well-known example.

Sustainable design: Design that takes account of materials, energy, repair and recycling over the object’s whole life.

Roman type: Typefaces with serifs and varying stroke weight, after the humanist script of the Renaissance. Nicolas Jenson’s types from Venice, 1470, are an early model; Garamond and Times are roman faces.

Grotesque (sans serif): Typefaces without serifs, usually with even stroke weight. The first appeared in London in 1816; Akzidenz-Grotesk and Helvetica are well-known grotesques.

Slab serif: Typefaces with heavy, rectangular serifs, developed in England early in the nineteenth century for advertising and posters and long called Egyptians. Clarendon of 1845 is a closely related style with softer transitions.

Didone: Roman types with strong contrast between thick and thin strokes, vertical stress and hairline serifs, after Didot in Paris and Bodoni in Parma around 1800.

Blackletter: Broken Gothic scripts such as textura, schwabacher and fraktur. Gutenberg printed his Bible in textura, and in Germany fraktur was used in books and newspapers until 1941.

Italic: A sloping style based on handwriting. The first italic type was cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1501 and was then used for whole books.

x-height: The height of the lower-case letters without ascenders, measured on an x. A large x-height makes text legible at small sizes and on screen, as in Verdana.

Kerning: Adjusting the space between two particular letters, such as A and V or T and o, so that the gaps look even.

Ligature: Two or more letters joined into one character, such as fi, fl and æ. The ampersand & began as a ligature of the Latin et.

Point size: The size of a typeface, measured in points. A point today is 1/72 inch, about 0.35 mm; the older Didot point was slightly larger.

Colophon: A note at the end of a book on where, when and by whom it was printed, often with the typeface and paper. In the earliest printed books it took the place of a title page.

Grid: A system of columns and fields that determines where text and images go on a page. The grid is the basis of Swiss typography.

Swiss style: The International Typographic Style from Zurich and Basel in the 1950s and 1960s: sans serif, ranged-left text, grids and objective photography. Helvetica appeared in 1957.

Sachplakat: German for object poster: a poster style from about 1905 showing a single product and a name in flat colours. Lucian Bernhard’s poster for Priester matches is the model.

Logotype: A company’s or product’s name written in a particular lettering, often together with a symbol. Together they form the brand’s mark of recognition.

Pictogram: A simplified pictorial symbol meant to be understood without words, as on signs. Otl Aicher’s pictograms for the 1972 Munich Olympics became the model for many later ones.

Letterpress: Relief printing with movable metal type set in lines, inked and pressed onto paper. Gutenberg introduced the technique in Mainz around 1450, and it was the standard printing method for nearly 500 years.

Lithography: Printing from stone: the image is drawn in grease on a ground limestone, and since grease and water repel each other the ink sticks only to the drawing. Alois Senefelder invented the method in 1796.

Colour lithography: Lithography with one stone for each colour, printed in turn. The technique made possible the great colour posters of the 1890s by Jules Chéret, Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha.

Screen printing: Ink is pressed through a fine mesh where a stencil masks the areas that are not to print. The technique is used on textiles, posters and objects and became popular in art in the 1960s.

Offset printing: A planographic process in which the ink passes from the printing plate to a rubber blanket and from there to the paper. Offset took over from letterpress during the twentieth century.

Halftone: Small dots of different sizes that let print reproduce tones and colour photographs. Under a magnifying glass the dots show in almost every printed picture of the twentieth century.