The designations were established by the journal Zeitschrift für Kristallographie – Crystalline Materials, which published its first round of supplemental reviews under the name Strukturbericht from 1913-1928. These reports were collected into a book published in 1931 by Paul Peter Ewald and Carl Hermann which became Volume 1 of Strukturbericht.  While the series was continued after the war under the name Structure reports, which was published through 1990,  the series stopped generating new symbols. Instead, some new additional designations were given in books by Smithels, and Pearson.
For the first volume, the designation consisted of a capital letter (A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,L,M,O) specifying a broad category of compounds, and then a number to specify a particular crystal structure. In the second volume, subscript numbers were added, some early symbols were modified (e.g. what was initially D1 became D0, noted in the tables below as "D1 → D0"), and the categories were modified (types I,K,S were added). In the third volume, the class I was renamed J. Later designations began to use a lower case letter in subscripts as well.