Graphic design is the process of visual communication and problem-solving through the use of typography, space, image and color.
The field is considered a subset of visual communication and communication design, but sometimes the term “graphic design” is used interchangeably with these due to overlapping skills involved. Graphic designers use various methods to create and combine words, symbols, and images to create a visual representation of ideas and messages. A graphic designer may use a combination of typography, visual, and page layout techniques to produce a final result. Graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated.
HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
While Graphic Design as a discipline has a relatively recent history, first coined by William Addison Dwiggins in 1922, graphic design-like activities span the history of humankind: from the caves of Lascaux, to Rome’s Trajan’s Column to the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, to the dazzling neons of Ginza. In truth “Babylon, artisans pressed cuneiform inscriptions into clay bricks or tablets which were used for construction. The bricks gave information such as the name of the reigning monarch, the builder, or some other dignitary”. Arguably, this could have been identified as the first billboard or road signs announcing the name of the governor of a state or mayor of the city today. The Egyptians developed a key communication by hieroglyphics which used picture symbols dating as far back as 136 B.C. found on the Rosetta Stone. “The Rosetta stone, found by one of Napoleon’s engineers was an advertisement for the Egyptian ruler, Ptolemy as the “true Son of the Sun, the Father of the Moon, and the Keeper of the Happiness of Men”” Further, the Egyptians also brought the invention of papyrus, paper made from reeds found along the Nile, on which they transcribed advertisements more common among their people at the time. Between the dates of 500A.D. and 1450 A.D., also known as the “Dark Ages”, it was the Monks that kept the symbols and writings alive when much of the citizenry were stagnated in progressive learning in reading and writing. In both this lengthy history and in the relatively recent explosion of visual communication in the 20th and 21st centuries, there is sometimes a blurring distinction and overlapping of advertising art, graphic design and fine art. After all, they share many of the same elements, theories, principles, practices and languages, and sometimes the same benefactor or client. In advertising art the ultimate objective is the sale of goods and services. In graphic design, “the essence is to give order to information, form to ideas, expression and feeling to artifacts that document human experience.” The History even as far back as Benjamin Franklin who use this paper The Pennsylvania Gazette, in 1728 he mastered the art of publicity not only did he promote his own books he used it to influence what he thought the masses should read, as well. “Benjamin Franklin’s ingenuity gained in strength as did his cunning and in 1737 he had replaced his counterpart in Pennsylvania, Andrew Bradford as postmaster and printer after a competition he instituted as copywriter and therefore won. He showed his prowess by running an ad in his General Magazine and the Historical Chronicle of British Plantations in America (the precursor to the Saturday Evening Post) that stressed the benefits offered by a stove he invented, named called the Pennsylvania Fireplace, which is still sold today and is known as the Franklin Stove. “American Advertising was as American as primitive plumbing as it imitated British newspapers and magazines. Newspapers offered 3 blocks of telling society, or the slaves that ran away from their masters. Advertisements were printed in scrambled type and uneven lines which made it difficult to read. It was Benjamin Franklin that changed this by adding 14 point heading of the first line of the advertisement; although later it was shortened and centered, making a real heading. Franklin’s use of type was masterful, he instinctively knew what “appealed to the eye”. It was Franklin that added illustrations which was something that not even London printers had done and was considered most advanced. Benjamin Franklin was the first to invent logos, which were early symbols that announced such advertisements as opticians with golden spectacles. Benjamin Franklin taught the advertisers that the use of detail was important to tell the story of their products. The idea of telling a story grew a monster as some began advertising in 10-20 lines adding color, names, varieties, and sizes of the goods they offered. The early advertisements tell us a lot about the culture, the thoughts and conditions that the colonists faced during the establishment of this great nation in its advertising infancy.
EMERGENCE OF THE DESIGN INDUSTRY
In late 19th-century Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, the first official publication of a printed design was released which marked the separation of graphic design from fine art.
In 1849, Henry Cole became one of the major forces in design education in Great Britain, informing the government of the importance of design in his Journal of Design and Manufactures. He organized the Great Exhibition as a celebration of modern industrial technology and Victorian design.
From 1891 to 1896, William Morris’ Kelmscott Press published books that are some of the most significant of the graphic design products of the Arts and Crafts movement, and made a very lucrative business of creating books of great stylistic refinement and selling them to the public. Morris created a market for works of graphic design in their own right to create a profession for this new type of art for aspiring individuals who wish to earn a living through these skills. The work of the Kelmscott Press is characterized by its obsession with historical styles. This historicism was, however, important as it amounted to the first significant reaction to the stale state of nineteenth-century graphic design. Morris’ work, along with the rest of the Private Press movement, directly influenced Art Nouveau and is indirectly responsible for developments in early twentieth century graphic design in general.
APPLICATIONS OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
From road signs to technical schematics, from interoffice memorandums to reference manuals, graphic design enhances transfer of knowledge and visual messages. Readability and legibility is enhanced by improving the visual presentation and layout of text.
Design can also aid in selling a product or idea through effective visual communication. It is applied to products and elements of company identity like logos, colors, packaging, and text. Together these are defined as branding (see also advertising). Branding has increasingly become important in the range of services offered by many graphic designers, alongside corporate identity. Whilst the terms are often used interchangeably, branding is more strictly related to the identifying mark or trade name for a product or service, whereas corporate identity can have a broader meaning relating to the structure and ethos of a company, as well as to the company’s external image. Graphic designers will often form part of a team working on corporate identity and branding projects. Other members of that team can include marketing professionals, communications consultants and commercial writers.
Textbooks are designed to present subjects such as geography, science, and math. These publications have layouts which illustrate theories and diagrams. A common example of graphics in use to educate is diagrams of human anatomy. Graphic design is also applied to layout and formatting of educational material to make the information more accessible and more readily understandable.
Graphic wayfinding signage systems have become important for large public spaces such as airports and convention centers. These systems often depend on graphic design to communicate information quickly and economically through a color or symbol that can be read and followed from a distance (as opposed to large amounts of text). Such environmental graphic design systems allow people to navigate unfamiliar spaces. The term “architectural graphics” was coined by Jane Davis Doggett, pioneer designer of airport wayfinding systems, but the term more commonly used in 2014 is environmental graphics.
Graphic design is applied in the entertainment industry in decoration, scenery, and visual story telling. Other examples of design for entertainment purposes include novels, comic books, DVD covers, opening credits and closing credits in filmmaking, and programs and props on stage. This could also include artwork used for T-shirts and other items screenprinted for sale.
From scientific journals to news reporting, the presentation of opinion and facts is often improved with graphics and thoughtful compositions of visual information – known as information design. Newspapers, magazines, blogs, television and film documentaries may use graphic design to inform and entertain. With the advent of the web, information designers with experience in interactive tools such as Adobe Flash are increasingly being used to illustrate the background to news stories.
SKILLS INVOLVED IN GRAPHIC DESIGNING
A graphic design project may involve the stylization and presentation of existing text and either preexisting imagery or images developed by the graphic designer. Artistic pieces can be incorporated in both traditional and digital form, which involves the use of visual arts, typography, and page layout techniques for publications and marketing. For example, a newspaper story begins with the journalists and photojournalists and then becomes the graphic designer’s job to organize the page into a reasonable layout and determine if any other graphic elements should be required. In a magazine article or advertisement, often the graphic designer or art director will commission photographers or illustrators to create original pieces just to be incorporated into the design layout. Or the designer may utilize stock imagery or photography. Contemporary design practice has been extended to the modern computer, for example in the use of WYSIWYG user interfaces, often referred to as interactive design, or multimedia design. Another aspect of graphic design is to have good research skills, analyzing a work of art and simultaneously seeing it in new ways. Graphic Design need skills such as power to convince the audience and selling the design. Communication is a key part in graphic design. The processes of graphic design include the “process school” which is an approach to the subject that is concerned with the actual process of communication; it especially highlights the channels and media through which messages are transmitted and by which senders and receivers encode and decode. Semiotic School on the other hand, is message as a construction of signs which through interaction with receivers, produces meaning; communication as an agent. The process school is like the way in which a message is brought out to society.
Visual arts design
Before any graphic elements may be applied to a design, the graphic elements must be originated by means of visual art skills. These graphics are often (but not always) developed by a graphic designer. Visual arts include works which are primarily visual in nature using anything from traditional media, to photography or digital art. Graphic design principles may be applied to each graphic art element individually as well as to the final composition.
Typography
Typography is the art, craft and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques. The arrangement of type is the selection of typefaces, point size, tracking (the space between all characters used), kerning (the space between two specific characters), and leading (line spacing).
Typography is performed by typesetters, compositors, typographers, graphic artists, art directors, and clerical workers. Until the Digital Age, typography was a specialized occupation. Digitization opened up typography to new generations of visual designers and lay users.
Page layout
The page layout aspect of graphic design deals with the arrangement of elements (content) on a page, such as image placement, and text layout and style. Beginning from early illuminated pages in hand-copied books of the Middle Ages and proceeding down to intricate modern magazine and catalogue layouts, structured page design has long been a consideration in printed material and more recently in electronic displays such as web pages. Elements usually consist of type (text), images (pictures), and (with print media) occasionally place-holder graphics for elements that are not printed with ink such as die/laser cutting, foil stamping or blind embossing.
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing on paper and other materials or surfaces. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same pieces, which is called a print. Each piece is not a copy but an original since it is not a reproduction of another work of art and is technically known as an impression. Painting or drawing, on the other hand, creates a unique original piece of artwork. Prints are created from a single original surface, known technically as a matrix. Common types of matrices include: plates of metal, usually copper or zinc for engraving or etching; stone, used for lithography; blocks of wood for woodcuts, linoleum for linocuts and fabric plates for screen-printing. But there are many other kinds, discussed below. Works printed from a single plate create an edition, in modern times usually each signed and numbered to form a limited edition. Prints may also be published in book form, as artist’s books. A single print could be the product of one or multiple techniques.
TOOLS USED IN GRAPHIC DESIGN
The mind is an important graphic design tool. Aside from technology, graphic design requires judgment and creativity. Critical, observational, quantitative and analytic thinking are required for design layouts and rendering. If the executor is merely following a solution (e.g. sketch, script or instructions) provided by another designer (such as an art director), then the executor is not usually considered the designer.
The method of presentation (e.g. arrangement, style, medium) may be equally important to the design. The appropriate development and presentation tools can substantially change how an audience perceives a project. The image or layout is produced using external traditional media and guides, or digital image editing tools on computers. Tools in computer graphics often take on traditional names such as “scissors” or “pen”. Some graphic design tools such as a grid are used in both traditional and digital form.
In the mid-1980s, the arrival of desktop publishing and graphic art software applications introduced a generation of designers to computer image manipulation and creation that had previously been manually executed. Computer graphic design enabled designers to instantly see the effects of layout or typographic changes, and to simulate the effects of traditional media without requiring a lot of space. However, traditional tools such as pencils or markers are useful even when computers are used for finalization; a designer or art director may hand sketch numerous concepts as part of the creative process. Some of these sketches may even be shown to a client for early stage approval, before the designer develops the idea further using a computer and graphic design software tools.
Computers are considered an indispensable tool in the graphic design industry. Computers and software applications are generally seen by creative professionals as more effective production tools than traditional methods. However, some designers continue to use manual and traditional tools for production, such as Milton Glaser.
New ideas can come by way of experimenting with tools and methods. Some designers explore ideas using pencil and paper. Others use many different mark-making tools and resources from computers to sculpture as a means of inspiring creativity. One of the key features of graphic design is that it makes a tool out of appropriate image selection in order to possibly convey meaning.
COMPUTERS AND GRAPHIC DESIGN
There is some debate whether computers enhance the creative process of graphic design. Rapid production from the computer allows many designers to explore multiple ideas quickly with more detail than what could be achieved by traditional hand-rendering or paste-up on paper, moving the designer through the creative process more quickly. However, being faced with limitless choices does not help isolate the best design solution and can lead to endless iterations with no clear design outcome.
A graphic designer may use sketches to explore multiple or complex ideas quickly[22] without the distractions and complications of software. Hand-rendered comps are often used to get approval for an idea execution before a designer invests time to produce finished visuals on a computer or in paste-up. The same thumbnail sketches or rough drafts on paper may be used to rapidly refine and produce the idea on the computer in a hybrid process. This hybrid process is especially useful in logo design where a software learning curve may detract from a creative thought process. The traditional-design/computer-production hybrid process may be used for freeing one’s creativity in page layout or image development as well. In the early days of computer publishing, many “traditional” graphic designers relied on computer-savvy production artists to produce their ideas from sketches, without needing to learn the computer skills themselves. However, this practice has been increasingly less common since the advent of desktop publishing over 30 years ago. The use of computers and graphics software is now taught in most graphic design courses.
POPULAR SOFTWARES USED FOR GRAPHIC DESIGN
Nearly all of the popular and “industry standard” software programs used for graphic design since the early 1990s are products of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Adobe Photoshop (a raster-based program for photo editing) and Adobe Illustrator (a vector-based program for drawing) are often used in the final stage of the electronic design process. Raster images may have been edited in Adobe Photoshop, logos and illustrations in Adobe Illustrator, and the final product assembled in one of the major page layout programs, including Adobe In-Design. Corel graphical suite is also widely used in graphic design, its features are similar to the product of adobe systems incorporated. Most graphic designers entering the field since about 1990 are expected to be proficient in at least one or two of these programs.
GRAPHIC DESIGN AT K&K ESOTERIC WORLD
At K&K Esoteric World, Graphic Design is grouped into the following categories:
K&K ESOTERIC 