Bill of lading

This is a bill of lading dating from 1772. A bill of lading, or connaissement in French (it's a French document) is a contract by which a shipping company certifies that it has received goods on board a vessel with mention of details identifying them and of the route and the price of transport, and by which it undertakes to deliver them to their destination, in the condition in which it received them, subject to perils or accidents at sea.

It can be thought of as an early example of information design, if only because it's a form. Certainly it doesn't look like information design as we think of it today. Indeed, it looks rather literary to modern eyes. But it is nevertheless a form with the basic characteristics which forms have kept to this day: standard printed text, spaces reserved for essential, variable, information to be added by hand, and a certain, if not hierarchisation, then at least organisation of information.