However, to assert that all graphic designers during this formative period were anonymous would nevertheless be a distortion. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the initial surge of graphically designed things began, the exemplars who created posters, magazine covers, and trademarks regularly signed their names — or identifiable pseudonyms — on all their works. In the chicken and egg history of graphic design it remains unclear whether these artists made the profession or vice-versa. But during this period in the expansion of Western commerce many graphic designers actively competed for business by developing personal styles which they promoted in trade magazines and throughout other media, which they did every bit as aggressively as a product they might be commissioned to advertise. Nevertheless, for each designer with a recognizable signature scores of anonymous ones were regularly churning out the overwhelming majority of commercial art for art service agencies, printers, sign painters, and display shops.