Graphic design
Graphic design is the process of communicating visually using typography and images to present information. Graphic design practice embraces a range of cognitive skills, aesthetics and crafts, including typography, visual arts and page layout. Like other forms of design, graphic design often refers to both the process designing by which the communication is created and the products designs which are generated.Graphic Design spans the history of humankind from the caves of Lascaux to the dazzling neons of Ginza. In both this lengthy history and in the relatively recent explosion of visual communication in the th and st centuries, there is sometimes a blurring distinction and over-lapping 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 paintings in the caves of Lascaux around , BC and the birth of written language in the third or fourth millennium BC are both significant milestones in the history of graphic design and other fields which hold roots to graphic design.The Book of Kells is an early example of graphic design. It is a lavishly decorated hand-written copy of the Gospels of the Christian Bible created by Celtic monks around AD.
From to 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 wealthy for a premium. Morris proved that a market existed for works of graphic design in their own right and helped pioneer the separation of design from production and from fine art. 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.
Modern
The signage in the London Underground is a classic[citation needed] of the modern era and used a font designed by Edward Johnston in .In the s, Soviet Constructivism art applied intellectual production in different spheres of production. The movement saw individualistic art as useless in revolutionary Russia and thus moved towards creating objects for utilitarian purposes. They designed buildings, theater sets, posters, fabrics, clothing, furniture, logos, menus, etc.[citation needed]Jan Tschichold codified the principles of modern typography in his book, New Typography. He later repudiated the philosophy he espoused in this book as being fascistic, but it remained very influential.[citation needed] Tschichold, Bauhaus typographers such as Herbert Bayer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and El Lissitzky are the fathers of graphic design[citation needed] as we know it today. They pioneered production techniques and stylistic devices used throughout the twentieth century. The following years saw graphic design in the modern style gain widespread acceptance and application.[citation needed]
A booming post-World War II American economy established a greater need for graphic design, mainly advertising and packaging. The emigration of the German Bauhaus school of design to Chicago in brought a mass-produced minimalism to America; sparking a wild fire of modern architecture and design. Notable names in mid-century modern design include Adrian Frutiger, designer of the typefaces Univers and Frutiger; Paul Rand, who, from the late s until his death in , took the principles of the Bauhaus and applied them to popular advertising and logo design, helping to create a uniquely American approach to European minimalism while becoming one of the principal pioneers of the subset of graphic design known as corporate identity; and Josef Müller-Brockmann, who designed posters in a severe yet accessible manner typical of the s and s.
Uses
Graphic design is used whenever visual clarity and creativity are applied to the presentation of text and imagery. 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.Anywhere there is a need to communicate visually, there is potential enhancement of communications through graphic design. Below are a few examples.From road signs to technical schematics, from interoffice memorandums to reference manuals, graphic design enhances transfer of knowledge. Readability is enhanced by improving the visual presentation of text. Intricate and clever pictures are used when words cannot suffice.
Graphic designs have a unique ability to sell a product or idea through effective visual communications. It is applied to products as well as elements of company identity like logos, colors, and text, together defined as branding. See advertising. Branding has increasingly become important in the range of services offered by many graphic designers, alongside corporate identity and the terms are often used interchangeably.Graphics are used in textbooks for subjects such as geography, science, and math to 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.
Information design
Information design has been defined as the art and science of preparing information so that it can be used by human beings with efficiency and effectiveness.Information design has its origins as a subset of, or synonym for graphic design and it is often taught as part of graphic design courses. One of the first uses of the term was by the London graphic design consultancy Pentagram, who used the term in the s to mean their graphic design, as distinct from product or other kinds of design. Since that time, the term has come to be used specifically for graphic design that has the purpose of displaying information effectively, rather than just attractively, or for the purpose of self expression by the designer as artist.
During the s information design broadened to include responsibility for message content and language, and a greater role for user-testing and research than had been traditional in mainstream graphic design.Information designers who have their roots in professional writing sometimes refer to the field as document design, particularly in the USA. The term Information graphics tends to be used by those primarily concerned with diagramming and display of quantitative information.In computer science and information technology, information design is sometimes a rough synonym for but is not necessarily the same discipline as information architecture, the design of information systems, databases, or data structures. This sense includes data modelling and process analysis.
History
Information design probably emerged with humans first efforts to communicate with one another. Early instances of modern information design include John Snows spot maps, which pinpointed the source of an s London cholera outbreak, Charles Joseph Minards diagram depicting Napoleons Russian campaign of , and Otto Neuraths International Picture Language of the s.e term information design emerged as a multidisciplinary area of study in the s. Some graphic designers started to use the term, and it was consolidated with the publication of Information Design Journal in . During the late s and s, the Journal of Typographic Research since renamed Visible Language was publishing research on a wider range of information design topics than its name suggested. Its editor, Merald Wrolstad, co-organised a series of Processing of Visible Language conferences, which brought together designers, psychologists, linguists, and interface engineers. Proceedings of other multidisciplinary conferences at the time include Easterby & Zwaga and Duffy & Waller . Schriver has a good history of the emergence of information design.The audiences information designers cater to may be very broad for example, the signs in airports are for everybody, or very specific - information products such as telephone bills may personalized for individual customers using market segmentation and information management techniques and technologies similar to those used in direct marketing.
A common characteristic of information design projects is an attempt to create or reinforce trust between users and design artifacts. These artifacts are associated with increased responsibility, such as medicine packaging inserts, operational instructions for industrial machinery, and information provided for use in emergencies. In other words, the audience has a reliance on the information conveyed.This means that information designers have an unusual degree of power over their audiences when compared to other designers,[citation needed] and with great power comes great responsibility. The increased responsibility means information designers require accountability, and this is developed through user testing of design artifacts.
Tools
The primary tool for graphic design is the creative mind. Critical, observational, quantitative and analytic thinking are required for designing page layout and rendering. If the executor is merely following a sketch, script or instructions as may be supplied by an art director they are not usually considered the author. The eye and the hand are often augmented with the use of external traditional or digital image editing tools. The selection of the appropriate one to the communication problem at hand is also a key skill in graphic design work, and a defining factor of the rendering style.In the mid s, the arrival of desktop publishing and the introduction of graphic art software applications introduced a generation of designers to computer image manipulation and image creation that had previously been laborious. Computer graphic design enabled designers to instantly see the effects of layout or typographic changes without using any ink in the process, and to simulate the effects of traditional media without requiring a lot of space. Traditional tools such as pencils or markers are often used to develop graphic design ideas, even when computers are used for finalization.
Computers are generally considered to be an indispensable tool used 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.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 designers endlessly iterating without a clear design outcome.
New ideas can come by way of experimenting with tools and methods, be they traditional or digital. Some designers explore ideas using pencil and paper to avoid creating within the limits of whatever computer fonts, clipart, stock photos, or rendering filters e.g. Kais Power Tools are available on any particular configuration. Others use many different mark-making tools and resources from computers to sticks and mud 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 convey meaning. Some graphic design ideas are created entirely in the mind, before approaching any external media.
A graphic designer may also use sketches to explore multiple or complex ideas quickly without the potential distractions of technical difficulties from software malfunctions or software learning.[citation needed] Hand rendered comps are often used to get approval of a graphic design idea before investing time to produce finished visuals on a computer or in paste-up if rejected. 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 ones creativity in page layout or image development as well.[citation needed] Traditional graphic designers may employ computer-savvy production artists to produce their ideas from sketches, without needing to learn the computer skills themselves. However, this practice is less utilized since the advent of desktop publishing and its integration with most graphic design courses.
User interface design
User interface design or user interface engineering is the design of computers, appliances, machines, mobile communication devices, software applications, and websites with the focus on the users experience and interaction. Where traditional graphic design seeks to make the object or application physically attractive, the goal of user interface design is to make the users interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals—what is often called user-centered design. Where good graphic/industrial design is bold and eye catching, good user interface design is to facilitate finishing the task at hand over drawing attention to itself. Graphic design may be utilized to apply a theme or style to the interface without compromising its usability. The design process of an interface must balance the meaning of its visual elements that conform the mental model of operation, and the functionality from a technical engineering perspective, in order to create a system that is both usable and easy to adapt to the changing user needs.
User Interface design is involved in a wide range of projects from computer systems, to cars, to commercial planes; all of these projects involve much of the same basic human interaction yet also require some unique skills and knowledge. As a result, user interface designers tend to specialize in certain types of projects and have skills centered around their expertise, whether that be software design, user research, web design, or industrial design.