The profession or academic discipline which includes the transmission of a message objectively with a specific purpose to a group of people or social groups visually is called graphic design. This means that graphic design has become the medium for the projection of any kind of idea through visual communication systems. The growing popularity of graphic design as a profession is because whenever any kind of idea is to be transmitted to some other person then it is easier for the person to understand in a visual mode than understanding the idea in a written form.
Many people think graphic design is a form of art which is not true. The purpose of art is to express your emotions or ideas but in the case of graphic designing, it follows a principle strictly. The principle of graphic designing is that “form follows a specific function”.
Graphic design and the different aspects of Graphic Design
Graphic design can be considered as a branch of design that is interdisciplinary. The objectives and foundations of graphic designing are totally based upon clearly defining the problems that can arise and also determining the objective things that should be followed while decision making. All these foundations are to be done with the help of digital tools and the person doing it should use their creative thinking, lateral thinking, and innovative ideas which will enable the idea to be interpreted properly by the other person.
This profession helps in optimizing the field of graphic communications. In today’s world, we also refer to graphic design by the name visual communication design. We also refer to graphic design with some other names such as editorial design and even visual design.
History of graphic design
The roots of graphic design that is the time from which the thing graphic design originated goes way back. When a child is in their third standard and they read their history books we can see that there are many caves and stones on which ancient drawings are found.
This was a form of graphic design as well because at that time also people used to draw pictures in order to show their ideas. We have found this kind of ancient drawing at many places such as the Caves of Lascaux, the neon lights of Ginza in the city of Tokyo, Japan, and also Rome’s Trajan’s columns. Even historians have found picture symbols that is one kind of hieroglyphics was used by the Egyptians and it is believed that the pictures were drawn way back in 136 Before Christ Era.
In the United States of America, graphic design gained popularity because of Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin had a newspaper named “The Pennsylvania Gazette” and it was this newspaper that he used to master the art of publicity. Through this newspaper, he used to influence the masses and also used to do advertisements to sell his books. At first, Benjamin Franklin printed advertisements in a scrambled manner on an uneven line but this made it hard for the reader to read the newspaper.
This problem was also solved by Franklin. He made an idea of using the tactics 14 point type for writing the first line of the advertisement. Later this was changed and now we can see only headlines. Franklin was the first person who started the utilization of logos and he made the advertisers understand why detailing a product is important for its marketing.
The beginning of the rise of Graphic Design as a profession
Graphic designing has a very long history but the idea of pursuing graphic designing as a profession truly became popular in the late 20th century and the 21st century. Before there was a line that used to keep a distinction among art, advertising, fine art, and graphic designing but in recent times that line has vanished.
Sometimes all of these share similar theories, practices, principles, and elements. It is also seen many times that all these even share the same beneficiary factor and sometimes the clients are also the same. Selling goods and services is the most important objective of advertising. This can only be done by the utilization of graphic designing as the customers will get a visual idea of the product that is being sold by the advertisers.
Skills that a person should possess in order to become a graphic designer
A project that is given to a graphic designer involves some activities that cannot be done by a normal person. The activities consist of the presentation and also stylization of a text that already exists or even imagery that already exists and also images that are designed by the graphic designer. All these things can be done in manual form or in digital form. The execution of any of the processes requires a person to possess a certain set of skills. The skills that a person should be expert at to be called a graphic designer are as follows:
Typography
Activities such as type design, arranging type and modifying type glyphs are included in the skill of Typography. Illustration techniques are a major part of the creation and modification of characters or and this is called type glyphs. The process of selecting the size of points, the maximum distance that is between characters is also called tracking, the distance between lines called leading, the distance between two specific characters known as kerning, and typefaces are called type arrangement. When the world was not much advanced in the field of technology that was the time when typography was seen as a specialized profession. Now in the digitalized world, this has become obsolete as graphic designers serve the purpose.
Page layout Designing
The process of arranging certain elements such as placing the images which are called image placement, stylizing the page, and changing the layout of the page is called page layout designing. All of these activities are really important for graphic designing and are a must-know skill for a person who has the urge to take up graphic designing as a profession. This skill is not for the elements that will be printed directly on the paper but for the elements which we know as placeholders for example stamps, stickers are mostly designed with the help of page layout designing.
Printmaking
The procedure which includes the activity of making artwork and then printing that artwork on paper, any other material, or any other surface is called printmaking. This process is used in manufacturing industries where many products of the same design are to be created and the material that the industries give as output are called prints. These prints are basically created from a singular original design.
The importance and applications of graphic designing
In today’s world where ever a person goes, they can see that graphic design is utilized. From advertisement posters to advertisements appearing on the television screens everywhere we see the use of graphic design and without graphic design, the world would be too much different. People would not be able to have any idea of a new product that will be getting launched and even if they read a theoretical description of the product then also they would not be able to get a complete idea of the product and would not be able to set an expectation or not even try to buy the product because it would be risky to buy something that they have no idea about.
As we have already mentioned that graphic design is a blessing for the whole world. Graphic designs are applied in everything nowadays. It is applied in the most common things like the road signs to things that are used in big industries like technical schematics. Graphic design is the main reason why advertising a product or advertising of some kind of service provided by a company is so much successful nowadays.
It also helps in creating a brand as it lets you create logos, stylizing the text which means the unique style of the text in which the name of the company should be written to make it unique. This basically means that graphic designing is the reason that people can identify companies by seeing the products hence it helps in creating an identity of the company.
You will see that graphic design is also applied in the entertainment industry. While making a visual story the creator uses graphic design. Even in popular films produced by “Marvel” they use graphic design for the special effects that are required. Some of the major examples of graphic design being used in the entertainment industry are that there are pictures in DVDs, writing the name of a film in a unique style on the DVDs, pictures on the comic books, in anime, and also the opening credits along with the closing credits.
All of these things require a graphic design to be executed. So graphic design has become a very important part of our day-to-day life, with graphic designing the world of technology would have been way back than it is in the present day.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article has helped you learn about graphic design and about the different aspects of it along with its importance.
