What is graphic design?

Graphic design is a discipline that seeks to convey a message through visual elements. Create graphic-expressive forms to satisfy a communication need for different purposes: advertising, informative, emotional, persuasive and artistic. 

Graphic designers make recipients experience emotions, know information or acquire knowledge through different techniques, signs, images, signals and innovative and creative ideas.

Graphic design is practically all around us all the time on the covers of books, the posters of upcoming movies, the logos of our favorite brands, the design of the packaging of what we buy in the supermarket, traffic signs, and the interface of a website. In short: it is impossible to escape from it. 

Although it has not always had the same preponderance as a Renaissance painting, we can see it in a museum. Time has shown that graphic design has as much artistic merit as any sculpture. For this reason, today, there are different contests and awards, such as Types of Santander, that seek to vindicate the discipline's importance and its exponents. Similarly, we can see rooms dedicated to its most influential representatives in venues such as MoMA.

Importance of graphic design

The importance of graphic design lies in how it improves and transforms the environment in which we live. The designers' creativity and innovation have given a graphic and representative image to all the products and various elements that are part of our day-to-day.

Can you imagine what a gray world without creativity would be like? Think of it this way: your favorite products wouldn't be as attractive without their packaging. Likewise, your favorite company's logo would also not be able to represent the same without the elements of graphic design. 

Everything that we live with every day, even the typography in which you read this article, has been developed by the mind of a graphic designer. Without this discipline, we would not have great insight into color theory or other creative topics. 

Graphics design firm is essential because it would be impossible to capture the ideas people seek to communicate in different types of messages. 

What is graphic design for?

Graphic design, in addition to being an artistic expression, also fulfills various objectives, such as identifying a brand and making a message remembered. In addition, it creates value in people's lives and allows companies to get closer to their ideal clients.

Below we share in detail each of the points about the functionalities of graphic design. 

Identify a brand

If there is an effort to make its logo and identity behind the creation of a brand, people will begin to identify it without having to see the name. We can recognize this with brands such as Apple, Nike, HubSpot or Google. How often have we not seen the doodle of the day and known that it is Google, despite the absence of letters?

Of course, it is not only because of the logo. It is also for everything related to your products or services: your stationery, the design of your website, the packaging of the items, the format of your follow-up emails, and the signature we see in your audiovisual ads, among others. If it is well-built, it will be memorable and unmistakable.

Remember a message

A well-designed newsletter or release makes it easier to retain crucial information. For example, a well-composed book cover will help us better remember the author's name or title.

A graphic design with good planning allows us to recognize, without words, a stop sign or a pedestrian crossing so that we slow down or announce the next detour on a highway without distracting us too much from the road.

Approach your ideal client

Have you ever felt that there are articles that "call you" even though you don't know the brand? It's enough just to see it on a shelf. This is because behind it is hours of research that went into choosing the color, size, font, depth, and composition of your design. It was created for a person like you to try it and give it a try without knowing anything about it yet.

Find a great value offer

And hopefully, improve the lives of many people. It may be because a book became a favorite with a community that learned more about fire prevention. Or like the Dumb ways to die campaign, which spoke about the dangers of not paying attention to the people of Melbourne on the train. He not only created a series of characters that have been replicated worldwide, but he reduced the number of accidents on that mode of transportation.

Although graphic design is all around us everywhere, it has different names, depending on the emphasis it places on its medium or purpose.

A brief history of graphic design 

Since before humans invented writing, we communicated with speech. But the record of what was communicated around 35,000 or 40,000 BC began with the cave paintings found in Europe and Africa. Over the centuries, and thanks to the evolution of civilizations worldwide, visual language has also become more sophisticated.

Just by looking at Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Hammurabi Code or Mesopotamian visual identification (Herodotus spoke of cylindrical metal seals that the Babylonians wore hanging from their wrists as a representation of social status and personal signature), we realize that since then, there was already an effort so that a message could be transmitted with images.

The changes that began to manifest with writing are also an important part of the history of graphic design. For example, the reproduction of papyri and medieval books (before the invention of the printing press) became art because of the ornamental texts and the illustrations that added information. 

Once the mass production of texts became possible, a design model for books was created along with it, examples of which we still have today. Many scholars establish the birth of graphic design with the creation of the printing press because it was the time when movable types were produced (and later the different typefaces that have been designed to date) and gave rise to, before the century XVI, the poster was printed, because before that year, they were made by hand and were mainly to announce government announcements.

With the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century, design began to play an important role in responding to the need to promote technology fairs, new devices for factory automation and shows in general. In the 19th century, the art nouveau trend turned the poster into an artistic expression in Europe. For example, there are posters created by Toulouse-Lautrec that, in addition to being illustrations worthy of framing, had the function of announcing the next show of a cabaret star in Paris.

However, it was not until 1922 that the term "graphic design" was registered for the first time in a medium. Instead, it was in the essay "New Forms of Printing Need New Forms of Design," written by book designer William Addison Dwiggins. By then, a new school had already been created in Germany, the Bauhaus, which mixed beauty with the functionality of objects; it incorporated minimalist shapes, solid colors, and simplistic typefaces.

After World War II, Paul Rand toyed with the possibility of mixing copy (or written message) with graphics. He created legendary logos that, despite having been in use for more than 50 years, remain in force, such as that of the IBM company. Who says that art is at odds with advertising?

To turn the latter on its head, pop art arrived, represented by Andy Warhol, with a more cynical approach to popular culture and everything around it. This caused many to lose their fear of design and play with it. Finally, thanks to the transformation of the computer industry during the late 1980s and early 1990s, graphic design tools became increasingly accessible to the common citizen.

Programs like Paint, Photoshop and InDesign are part of the basic tools in almost any office, as the combination of images with text has proven to be very valuable to send a message, whether it is for propaganda in times of war or to boost the morale of soldiers. And civilians, or the dissemination of health security measures in a kind and memorable way for the care of all.

Get more inspiration to continue your design journey with memorable quotes from graphic designers.

Graphic design meets certain characteristics that distinguish it from other disciplines, and we share them with you below.

5 characteristics of graphic design

Meet a goal before any graphic piece is made. A primary goal must be set: educating about a topic, informing about a procedure, wearing a brand identity, making signs to guide people inside a building, etc.

It is aimed at a specific audience

Although it may be available to everyone, there is a target audience for that design. For this reason, it will have elements that will be more identifiable with the group of people to whom it is directed, which makes the design something memorable and intimately related to its recipients.

Establish a concept

The elements that make up a graphic design help us understand the main idea it tries to communicate. This could be the importance of hygiene to prevent illness, for example. Therefore, everything involved in this message's design will make it easier to understand. 

It is useful

A graphic design, as we already mentioned when reviewing a bit of its history, can have a lot of artistic and aesthetic merit, but its main function is that it must be useful.

It was created to convey a message with a specific function:

• Announce a show (like the ones in Paris at the end of the 19th century).
• Create a simple map of a public transport system.
• Give a record of a face (like the legendary banana cover of The Velvet Underground, designed by Warhol).

Perhaps it will also become a painting worthy of a wall in a house or a museum.

Communicate

Unlike a work of art, which does not need to give a clear message, graphic design must be unequivocal, with no room for ambiguity. Otherwise, it loses its usefulness, and the message does not arrive as planned.

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