Introduction

Prints are matters. It has a long history throughout the world because it seeps into a large scale of society. Also, it is interesting to see how print technology improvements make an impact on the art form and how artists deal with it in America. Since 1960 artists and their collaborators have pushed the boundaries of printmaking by expanding our view of what a print is. I was wondering how visual form changed in America during the past decades?

Through this process, I can obviously view the transformation of visual form in print artworks. By going through the stories behind artworks, I can develop a comprehensive understanding of art evolution and social issues, etc. Timeline as a data collection method makes data as clusters show information in a clear and meaningful way that viewers can explore more content based on those data.

Materials

I use TimelineJS, a free open-source tool that allows users to build interactive timelines with images, videos and text. The tool provides you with a Google spreadsheet template to create my timeline. It allows me to add media from many sources, such as Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc.

I use https://www.slam.org/audio/graphic-revolution/ as a source for my dataset. It has a very professional and conclusive summary of the graphic revolution of print in America.

Method

By using the google sheets, I easily put my data into different category form because it will help to create details of the timeline. I copy the link of my google sheet in TimelineJS because it allows users to edit data in realtime so that I can check my process effectively. Putting complicated data into groups makes data look simple and easier to understand. The more categories I do, the more confidence I gained in this step.

Results

Link to my timeline: https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1atUqXv72DUKyKSGr6A0-I6C5C1QrSgH1GYAuVZbL6v4&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650

Reflection

I think this lab is a great opportunity for me to overview of graphic revolution in a whole picture. People, especially artists treated the method like print or photograph can a kind of reflect social reality and needs. When they switched materials to make print work or added new texture on the paper, they had concerned about the revolution of other aspects of people. For example, abstract artworks are related to political policy. It also represents that artists put more attention on social issues than individual issues compared to the past. That’s why I chose this topic to help me have a better understanding of visual print in history.

If I continue to do it, I would like to add more details and explination of visual form because those are meaning samples. Different colors have unique meanings, so as to the texture. They both have their own evolution timeline. By adding them, viewers can develop a better understanding of America print form development.