15th Century Clipart
The history of clip art can be traced back to the days of plate printing. In the late medieval period, somewhere around the 15th century, etchings and carvings were made, filled with ink and paper was placed over the top to enable the artist to recreate numerous copies of the same work. While that may not be reminiscent of anything that is currently understood as Clipart, it is certainly the beginning of the story. From there, as plate printing progressed, so did the art forms associated with the printing press.
The Start of Clipart Terminology
When printing presses evolved into the mass production tools very similar to what many large newspapers still use today, so did the graphics that were associated with the print publications. Now, instead of having to copy one picture or one single plate at a time, pictures could be clipped and pasted on the plates to be used on the printing presses of the day. This step was generally completed in the layout process and from the layout, a master (plate) was made, including all of the art that had been clipped and pasted on to the layout. The plate was then run through the press, leaving the ink on the paper just as the items appeared on the original layout.
This is where the term Clipart was first coined on a large scale. It was so named due to the fact that the artwork had to be clipped from its original source, size and format and cut and trimmed in order to fit onto the plate that was being made for the print publication. The advances that have been made in technology since those days has once again changed the lexicon and the term Clipart is now used to represent something that the people who originally coined the phrase would have no clue about. Clipart is now used mostly to define pre-made computer graphics that can serve any number of purposes online in addition to print publications.
Digital Clip Art Starts with the Graphical User Interface
In the early days of computers and the Internet, the BBS or Bulletin Board System was all the rage. However, it was primarily limited to text and CLI or a Command Line Interface. As the technology grew, the GUI or Graphical User Interface evolved as well and suddenly, graphics could be displayed not only on home computers, but transmitted on what would become the World Wide Web. Due to limitations at the time, most of the original graphics were very limited displays utilizing eight bit technology and only 256 colors. Still, at the time that was a vast improvement to people who had never had anything but text online.
Most of the original Clipart was used to spice up the new personal web pages that people had, create more attractive advertisements to entice people to click on them and other uses mainly for the internet. One other revolution occurred in the mid nineteen eighties that further broadened the use of Clipart and began its transition into the valuable online resource that it has become today.
Clipart Increases with DTP
Home printing also went through many revolutions in the mid 1980s and software developers created vast amounts of computer graphics software to allow the user to create their very own print publications. Since scanning technology and digital photography were not nearly as commonplace or as cheap as they are today, most of these software programs included vast amounts of Clipart in order to allow the end user to create professional looking newsletters, brochures, advertisements and much more, all from the comfort of their very own homes.
In recent years, the Clipart industry has grown from a small inclusion in certain computer graphics software packages into a global market all of its own. People are now free to use Clipart graphics on the web, create their own, share their ideas and in some cases, even work together to create entire new portfolios of niche animal paw Clipart graphics which are more often than not, freely available to the end user at no charge whatsoever. These free Clipart web sites often make money only through advertisements or donations that are made by people who are all too happy to have all of the Clipart available without having to do any of the tedious work involved in making graphics.
The history of Clipart goes back long before the days of computers but computer graphics do look poised to bring Clipart to new heights. These days, photographic Clipart is readily available. Clip art in just about any category including animals, babies, footprints, nature, wildlife and many more can also be found with a simple Internet search. Whether it is for building a newsletter for online delivery, building a personal web site, putting together a simple brochure or major advertising campaign, Clipart can be found to meet just about any need.
