The aim of this course is to enable students to understand the historical development of visual communication, typography, and graphic design from antiquity to the contemporary digital revolution within a universal context. The course aims to help Visual Communication Design students analyse past design movements and build a cultural and aesthetic foundation for their own design practices. It also seeks to develop analytical and creative thinking and to evaluate the continuity of visual culture and human heritage, from prehistoric periods to the digital revolution, in relation to design practice.

The emergence of visual communication; the invention of writing and printing; the reflections of the Industrial Revolution on design practices; pioneering modern art and design movements such as Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Cubism, Futurism, Dada, De Stijl, and Bauhaus; the International Typographic Style (Swiss Style), the New York School; Postmodernism and contemporary approaches after 1960; and the history of visual design, motion graphics, and interactive media in the age of the digital revolution.