What is graphic design in our time?
Graphic design – what is it?
Nowadays the concept of “design” has so broadened its boundaries that it is already difficult for us to imagine the world around without it. The design has penetrated almost all spheres of human activity. This fully applies to this type of design art, such as graphic design. With its manifestations we come across everywhere – we buy newspapers, books and glossy magazines, pay attention to advertising leaflets, labels and colorful posters, we face graphic design in printing and Internet.
Graphic design has turned not so much into creating attractive pictures, but rather in changing the visual-communicative environment that surrounds a person in everyday life. Today, graphic design is a whole science in which the analyst’s calculus is combined with the artist’s creative abilities.
Although this branch of design can be called relatively young, since the official date of its birth is considered to be 1964, when the First Congress of the International Society of Graphic Design Organizations was held, nevertheless, the origins of graphic design date back to the most ancient times. After all, even the most ancient and primitive drawings made by human hand can be considered as an initial stage in the development of graphic design.
Over time, people have come closer to the realization that the expression of information through graphic symbols is much more effective than simple text or spoken language. An example of this in modern life can be various warning signals on the roads, giving the driver the minimum information required in a short time.
An important role in the development and development of graphic design was played by the advent of the era of printing. In Europe, the history of graphic design as a separate field of activity, belonging to the number of artistic and professional disciplines, refers to the Middle Ages, when the first, still quite primitive printing machines became relatively available to publishers.
The development of graphic design as a specific area of creativity is directly related to the gradual merger of two trends – commercial art, associated with the mass production of posters, newspaper and magazine publications in the late XIX – first half of the XX century, and modern fine art. The wide distribution of photography, the development of cinematography, followed by the expansion of television and video, contributed to the growth of interest in visual forms of expression and perception.
Another important stage associated with the development of graphic design is the emergence of digital technologies and the creation of personal computers, which gave graphic designers the latest tools that have radically changed their work. Computers made it possible to create all the blanks in a software environment, which allows designers to experiment with various solutions and easily correct their mistakes when necessary. In the age of computer technology and the Internet, graphic design has become more accessible and free.
As we see, graphic design has passed a long enough way of its development. Earlier, under the graphic design, only the artistic location and installation on a printed sheet of text with the image in the process of creation of the visual-verbal series were understood, but today the scope of the graphic designers’ activity has significantly expanded. Under the graphic design now understand the creation of visual (graphic) images in order to implement certain ideas. In the modern world, the importance of visual forms of expression has grown enormously.
Graphic design carries an informative function (in order to explain to people a variety of issues) and emotional (to cause a person to have certain feelings and form the right opinion). Obviously, graphic design is closely intertwined with advertising and visual arts, and therefore it uses roughly similar concepts, elements, principles and methods. For example, if the main thing for advertising is to sell, then for graphic design – to convey to people some idea. To solve this problem, graphic designers use a variety of visual communications.
It should be noted that graphic design is somewhat different from the usual or, for example, industrial design, where the main task is to make everything comfortable and beautiful that surrounds a person in everyday life. Graphic design is not related to the artistic design of objects, but to the world of information. The means of graphic design can be various visual communications – from a short advertisement to a huge electronic information board.
The graphic designer works with graphic images that can push the viewer to the action or reasoning that the creator of the information message needs. Thus, the graphic designer is trying to translate information into a visual language that most people understand. With the help of graphic images, he is able to deliver almost any information to the addressee without resorting to any lengthy verbal explanations.
There are different types of graphic design. For example, where a text is used, a significant role is played by a printing house, based on the creation of a verbal text by means of a typographical set. Here an important point is choosing the font, placing headings, parts of the text or screen savers both relative to each other, and in relation to the information carrier, that is, to the newspaper strip or the poster field.
In graphic design, closely related to industrial production and its products, designers deal with brand names, labels and packaging. Also, graphic design is widely used in the field of commerce and entertainment. Here, the work of a graphic designer is associated with the creation of promotional brochures, catalogs, posters associated with a particular advertising company.
Also, graphic design plays a big role in creating the corporate style of the company, that is, determining a permanent, memorable visual image of everything that is related to the enterprise, its activities and products. To such basic elements of corporate style, which are developed by graphic designers, include logo, font, color scale and compositional principles. Elements of corporate identity can cover everything that is related to the daily activities of the company, from business documentation to clothing models of employees.
So, the graphic design includes the following directions:
– typography (the art of literally providing textual information);
– design of printing and printed products (newspapers, flyers, magazines, posters, posters and stickers);
– development of corporate identity (definition of a set of visual techniques united by a common direction inherent in all products, attributes and advertising companies of the firm);
– web-design as an area of graphic design;
– development of orientation systems (warning signs and symbols);
– package design;
– creating illustrations.
Of course, at the moment, graphic design is most involved in advertising, publishing and printing, as well as other areas of the mass media, where it helps in the sale and distribution of certain ideas. Graphic design forms the image of the company and visually represents the direction of business, which helps attract potential customers. The success of any advertising company directly depends on the quality of designing. And in the finished design solution there must always be an attractive and original composition that would cause the viewer the necessary associations, for example, trust in the brand or quality.
In the face of increasingly fierce competition in the market from the very beginning of the company’s creation and throughout its life, management constantly faces the need to use graphic design. After all, any company strives to stand out from the competition, plus it is very important that potential customers not only learn about the activities of the company, but also remember it. It is very difficult to solve this problem without using graphic design tools that represent information in an easy visual form that is human-readable. Working with visual images, the graphic designer is able to excite a person with a sudden memory, serve as a pleasant association or give him an aesthetic, or maybe intellectual pleasure.
It should be understood that graphic design is a related industry in very many other areas, including fine arts, geometry, typographical layout, drawing and technical design. Accordingly, this area of design includes the methods and tools inherent in a number of other related spheres. Over time, the graphic designer’s trade began to operate with more marketing, economic and cultural communications. Therefore, often in the performance of a project, the designer-graph cooperates with other specialists – psychologists, sociologists, marketers and art historians. This is necessary in order to develop an optimal strategy for processing information and turning it into concrete visual signals that will be interpreted by the viewer definitely and unequivocally.
However, the designer’s competence also includes relevant knowledge about the market, consumers, psychological opportunities for perception. After all, in the process of its activities, the graphic designer collects and analyzes information, determines the problem and sets goals, creates a general design concept. And only after that he goes directly to developing a graphic solution and a harmonious composition. The professional qualities and qualifications of a modern graphic designer are directly conditioned by how freely, broadly and tactfully he knows the methods of “information design” and knows how to manage visual communication tools.
Graphic design is now used in many areas of activity, bearing a decorative, informative and emotional function. Projects developed by professional graphic designers are often called visual creatives and their creators own the same rights as, for example, literary authors or creators of works of art. Thus, graphic design has become an independent and actively developing direction of modern applied art.
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