El Comercio Inaugural Edition - Masthead Design

El Comercio's 1839 inaugural issue represents a watershed moment in South American design history. The masthead brilliantly merges European industrial printing capabilities with Peruvian visual traditions through its sophisticated integration of neoclassical floral motifs and modern typography. The paper's tagline "ORDEN, LIBERTAD, SABER" (Order, Liberty, Knowledge) encapsulates the era's progressive ideals, while its layout demonstrates the new possibilities enabled by industrial printing presses. As Peru's longest-running newspaper, El Comercio's design choices influenced visual communication across South America, establishing standards for how information could be organized and presented to an increasingly literate public. This design helped shape the visual language of Peruvian mass media during a crucial period of industrialization and cultural transformation.