Graphic Design is the creative discipline that brings together words and visual imagery to communicate to an audience…Graphic design is essentially a process of problem solving – how best to get the identified information to a particular audience…Graphic design is rooted in language; it deals with written language through typography and visual language through images, colour, composition, signs and symbols… (Open College of the Arts., 2010:12 -13)
Graphic design, also known as communication design, is the art and practice of planning and projecting ideas and experiences with visual and textual content. The form of the communication can be physical or virtual, and may include images, words, or graphic forms. The experience can take place in an instant or over a long period of time. The work can happen at any scale, from the design of a single postage stamp to a national postal signage system, or from a company’s digital avatar to the sprawling and interlinked digital and physical content of an international newspaper. It can also be for any purpose, whether commercial, educational, cultural, or political. American Institute of Graphic Arts,
One of the delights of moving into a relatively new field is that it opens up your perspective and brings new insights. Graphic Design could be said to be ubiquitous and I realise that for me that means it potentially goes unseen, it’s outputs have become so much a part of the fabric of cultural life.
I don’t think I had taken it for granted, in fact in my own search for a sympathetic Graphic Designer I discovered how challenging it is to work with someone who couldn’t seem to communicate what I was looking for as a client . It is a complex relationship that takes effort to build into a visual language. Anyway, I digress.
As part of my introduction to GD1 I have challenged myself to consider exactly what graphic design is and how it potentially differs from other art related disciplines. Interestingly, others seem to have framed a similar quest in terms of ‘what is the purpose of graphic design?’, which already highlights something distinct as it is not necessarily a question you might ask of other artforms.
Definitions seem to focus around graphic design being art with a message, rooted in visual communication. It could be said to have three roles (Hollis, 2001: 10):
- To identify: to show what something is or where it came from
- To inform and instruct: indicating the relationship of one thing to another in direction, position or scale
- To present and promote: to attract attention and put forward a memorable message
To do these things it seems to me that graphic design needs to be aware of its context and constantly adapt.
Graphic design constitutes a kind of language with an uncertain grammar and a continuously expanding vocabulary.(Hollis, 2001: 10)
Although this poses challenges in terms of how I might ever get hold of such a slippery practice the notion of it constantly evolving is very appealing. One of the things I have often found useful in my photography is to know some of the ground-rules but to be ready to bend or abandon them where appropriate.
One of the definitions I therefore prefer focuses on graphic design being ‘a shared framework in which to invent and organise visual content.’ (Lupton & Phillips, 2015: 8)
This seems to place emphasis on the capacity to experiment and develop work within given parameters. I hope the course is going to help me understand what constitutes the ‘framework’ for graphic design.
References and citations:
Hollis, R. (2001). Graphic Design: A concise history. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
Lupton, E., & Phillips, J. C. (2015). Graphic Design The New Basics (2nd ed.). New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
Open College of the Arts. (Ed.). (2010). Graphic Design Level 1: Core Concepts. Barnsley, UK: OCA.
http://www.aiga.org/what-is-design/
