This beautifully produced book gives readers a vivid awareness of graphic design (mostly in the English-speaking world) from 1700-1914. Because this is graphic design before the trade of graphic designers developed, it has often been ignored by contemporary teachers, students, and professionals. The almost 800 illustrations here, most in color, showcase the design creativity and distinctive styles of print jobbers; these form a convincing argument that contemporary visual design students should study and learn from their work. The book fills a gap for design education, as well as providing a lavish and thoroughly enjoyable time for any reader who loves good design or is interested in the history of the early modern era. The best of the famous fruit-crate labels and seed packages are here, but so are original and distinctive fonts and layouts in handbills, posters, and other daily ephemera showing striking and skillful text and text+graphic combinations, sometimes with a very modern edge. As the book's cover cleverly indicates, there's a lively diversity behind the William Morris wallpaper of our imagination of these times. The quality of images and their reproduction here is excellent. The writer, David Jury, is the editor of the professional journal TypoGraphic and the author of previous books on typography and letterpress printing. Though a design professional, he writes here with a vivid sense of history, explaining new technologies and political and cultural changes that drove design looks in each era. His prose is clear, journalistic, and enjoyable for general readers. Professionally, Jury speaks for the printer as designer, but designers in all areas will benefit by learning a design vocabulary that is quickly becoming the neo-Victorian cutting edge. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)