PART 1. From antiquity to modern times. Archaic signs, figures, and writing - The Middle Ages : graphic design as cottage industry - Techniques and materials : paper, printing, and composition - The Renaissance : fifteenth and sixteenth centuries - The passage from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries - The neoclassic period -- PART 2. The long nineteenth century. Decisive changes - A revival in the arts and graphics - Affirmations of modernity -- PART 3. The first third of the twentieth century. The avant-garde floodtide - Word War I - Continuation and reconstruction in the avant-garde - PART 4. From the rise of totalitarianism to World War II. Totalitarianism : avant-garde exile and survival - World War II - PART 5. Postwar economic boom. Characteristics and horizons - Creativity and trends country by country - Professionalism and expansion -- PART 6. The final decades of the twentieth century. Pre-digital graphic design : context and overview - Experimentation in the 1970s - The advent of digital design - Widespread freedom.