What Is Graphic Design: History And Origins

Graphic design is a career whose business is the act of designing, programming, and create visual communications, generally produced by industrial means and intended to convey specific messages to specific social groups, with a transparent purpose. This is the activity that allows graphically communicate ideas, facts and values processed and synthesized when it comes to form and communication, social, cultural, economic, aesthetic and technological. Also often known as visual communication design, because some associate the word figure only to the printing industry, and understand that visual messages are channeled through many media, not only print.

Given the huge and rapid growth within the exchange of knowledge, the demand for graphic designers is larger than ever, particularly due to the development of recent technologies and the necessity to listen to the human aspects which can be beyond the competence of engineers who develop them.

Some classifications are widely used graphic design: promoting design, editorial design, corporate identity design, website design, packaging design, typographic design, signage design, multimedia design, amongst others.

Graphic Design History

The definition of the graphic design career is quite recent, in what concerns their preparation, their activities and goals. Although there isn’t any consensus on the precise date of the birth of graphic design, some dating in the course of the interwar period. Others understand that begins to discover as such to the late nineteenth century.

Arguably specific graphic communications purposes have their origin in Paleolithic cave paintings and the birth of written language within the third millennium BC. C. But the differences in working methods and training required auxiliary sciences are such that it is just not possible to obviously discover the present graphic designer with prehistoric man, with xylograph fifteenth century or the lithographer 1890.

The diversity of opinion reflects the undeniable fact that some see as a product of graphic design and all other graphical demonstration only people who arise in consequence of the applying of a model of business production, those visual manifestations which were “projected” contemplating needs of differing types: productive symbolic ergonomic contextual etc.

Background

A page from the Book of Kells: Folio 114, with decorated text accommodates the Tunc dicit illis. An example of art and page layout of the Middle Ages.

The Book of Kells – A Bible handwritten richly illustrated by Irish monks within the ninth century CE-is for some a really beautiful and early example of graphic design concept. It is a graphic demonstration of great artistic value, prime quality, and that even a model for learning to design-for even surpasses in quality to lots of the current-editorial productions, and likewise from a functional perspective contemporary This graphic piece responds to all needs presented the team of people that made it, nevertheless others imagine that it might be graphic design product, because they understand that their design is just not adjusted to the concept of current graphic design project.

The history of typography-and by transitive, also the history of the book-is closely linked to graphic design, this will be because there are virtually no graphics designs that don’t include such items graphics. Hence, when talking in regards to the history of graphic design, typography also cited the Trajan column, medieval miniatures, Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, the evolution of the book industry, the posters Parisian Arts Movement and Crafts (Arts and Crafts), William Morris, Bauhaus, etc.. “

The introduction of movable type by Johannes Gutenberg made books cheaper to supply, and facilitate their dissemination. The first printed books (incunabula) scored the role model to the 20th century. Graphic design of this era has turn out to be often known as Old Style (especially the typefaces which these early typographers used), or Humanist, as a consequence of the predominant philosophical school of the time.

After Gutenberg, no significant changes were seen until the late nineteenth century, particularly in Britain, there was an effort to create a transparent division between the high-quality and applied arts.

In the nineteenth Century

First page of the book “The Nature of Gothic” by John Ruskin, published by the Kelmscott Press. The Arts and Crafts intended to revive the medieval art, inspiration in nature and manual labor.

During the nineteenth century visual message design was entrusted alternately two professionals: the artist or the publisher. The first was formed as an artist and the second as a craftsman, often each in the identical schools of arts and crafts. For the printer as art was using ornaments and choosing fonts printed in his compositions. The artist saw typography as a baby and paying more attention to ornamental and illustrative elements.

Between 1891 and 1896, the William Morris Kelmscott Press published a few of the most important graphic products Arts and Crafts Movement (Arts and Crafts), and established a lucrative business based on the design of books of great stylistic refinement and selling them to the upper classes as luxury items. Morris proved that a market existed for works of graphic design, establishing the separation of design from production and the high-quality arts. The work of the Kelmscott Press is characterised by its recreation of historic styles, especially medieval.

First Vanguards

Poster for the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Made by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec with color lithography in 1891. Thanks to Art Nouveau, graphic design and visual clarity gained by the composition.

Isotype of the Bauhaus. Founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius, is taken into account the birthplace of the graphic design career.

Given Poster for Matinée. Made by Theo van Doesburg in January 1923. The free font organization, expresses the spirit of the Dada movement, irrationality, for freedom and oppose the establishment and visual expressions of the time.

Corporate identity design for Lufthansa, by the Development Group 5 of the HFG Ulm. Ulm School was an inflection point within the history of design, since there may be outlined the design career through scientific methodology.

Current pictograms design for the National Park Service of the United States. The idea to simplify the symbols forms developed in the course of the Nineteen Fifties.

The design of the early twentieth century, in addition to the high-quality arts of the identical period, was a response against the decadence of typography and design of the late nineteenth century.

The interest in ornamentation and the proliferation of measurement changes and typographical style one piece design, synonymous with good design, it was an concept that was maintained until the late nineteenth century. The Art Nouveau, with its clear desire stylistic was a movement that contributed to higher order visual composition. While maintaining a high level of formal complexity, did so inside a robust visual consistency, discarding the variation of typographic styles in a single graphic piece.

Art movements of the second decade of the 20th century and the political turmoil that accompanied them, generated dramatic changes in graphic design. The Dada, De Stijl, Suprematism, Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, the Bauhaus and created a recent vision that influenced all branches of the visual arts and design. All these movements against the ornamental arts and popular, in addition to the Art Nouveau, which under the influence of the brand new interest in geometry evolved into the Art Deco. All these movements were a revisionist and transgressive spirit in all arts of the time. This period also publications and manifestos proliferated through which artists and educators expressed their opinions.

During the Nineteen Thirties developed for the composition interesting facets of graphic design. The graphic style change was significant since it shows a response against eclecticism ornamentalist organicism and the time and proposes a more stripped and geometric. This style, connected with Constructivism, Suprematism, Neoplasticism, De Stijl and Bauhaus exerted an enduring influence and inescapable in the event of twentieth century graphic design. Another essential element in relation to skilled practice, was the increasing use of visual form as communication element. This item appeared mostly within the designs produced by the Dada and De Stijl.

The symbol of contemporary typography is the sans serif font or serif, inspired by industrial sorts of the late nineteenth century. Highlights include Edward Johnston, writer of the font for the London Underground, and Eric Gill.

Design Schools

Jan Tschichold embodied the principles of contemporary typography in his 1928 book, New Typography. He later repudiated the philosophy presented on this book, calling it fascist, but remained very influential. Herbert Bayer, who dirigó from 1925-1928 the typography and promoting workshop on the Bauhaus, created the conditions for a recent career: the graphic designer. He put the topic “Advertising” within the education program including, amongst other things, the evaluation of promoting media and the psychology of promoting. Notably, the primary to define the term Graphic Design was the designer and typographer William Addison Dwiggins in 1922.

Thus Tschichold, Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, and El Lissitzky became parents of graphic design as we understand it today. They pioneered production techniques and styles which were using later. Today, computers have dramatically altered production systems, however the approach that contributed to experimental design is more relevant than ever dynamism, experimentation and even very specific things like selecting fonts (Helvetica is a revival, originally a Typography design based on the nineteenth-century industrial) and orthogonal compositions.

In the years following the trendy style gained acceptance, while stagnated. Notable names in modern design midcentury are Adrian Frutiger, designer of the typefaces Univers and Frutiger, and Josef Müller-Brockmann, large poster of the fifties and sixties.

The Hochschule für Gestaltung (HFG) in Ulm was one other key institution in the event of the graphic design career. Since its founding, the HFG distanced himself from a possible affiliation with promoting. At the start, the department concerned was called Visual Design, however it quickly became clear that his current goal was to unravel design problems in the world of mass communication in the tutorial 12 months 1956-1957 the name was modified to Department of Visual Communication, modeled Visual Communication Department on the New Bauhaus in Chicago.2 3 In the HFG Ulm, decided to work primarily in the world of persuasive communication within the fields resembling traffic sign systems, plans for technical equipment, or visual translation of scientific content. Until that point weren’t systematically taught these areas in every other European school. In the early ’70s, members of the Bund Deutscher Grafik-Designer (Association of German graphic designers), unveiled several features of their skilled identity, as within the case of Anton Stankowski amongst others. While in 1962 the official definition of the career was directed almost exclusively to the promoting, now prolonged to incorporate areas situated under the rubric of communication visual.4 corporate images produced by the Development Group 5 of the HFG Ulm resembling those created for the firm Braun or airline Lufthansa were also critical to this recent skilled identity.

Gui Bonsiepe and Tomas Maldonado were two of the primary individuals who tried to use the design ideas from semantics. In a seminar held on the HFG Ulm in 1956, Maldonado proposed modernizing rhetoric, classical art of persuasion. Maldonado Bonsiepe after which wrote several articles on semiotics and rhetoric for Uppercase English publication and Ulm magazine that will be a very important resource for designers to that area. Bonsiepe suggested that it was essential to have a contemporary system of rhetoric, semiotics updated as a tool to explain and analyze the phenomena of promoting. Using this terminology, could expose the “ubiquitous structure” of a message publicitario.5

The idea of simplicity and good design feature continued this for a few years, not only within the design of alphabets but in addition in other areas. The tendency to simplify influenced all means on the forefront of design within the Nineteen Fifties. At that point, developed a consensus that easy, not only was the equivalent of excellent, but was also more readable equivalent. One of the toughest hit areas was the design of symbols. The designers raised the query of how they could possibly be simplified without destroying its informative function. However, recent investigations have shown that the form simplification just one symbol doesn’t necessarily increase readability.

Second Vanguards

Reaction to the sobriety growing graphic design was slow but inexorable. The origins of postmodern fonts back to the humanist movement of the fifties. In this group highlights Hermann Zapf, who designed two typefaces today ubiquitous Palatino (1948) and Best (1952). Blurring the road between serif fonts and sans serif and reintroducing organic lines within the lyrics, these designs served more to ratify the trendy movement to rebel against him.

An essential milestone was the publication of the Manifesto, first things first (1964), which was a call for a more radical type of graphic design, criticizing the concept of design in series worthless. He had a large influence on a recent generation of graphic designers, contributing to the emergence of publications resembling Emigre magazine.

Another notable designer of the late twentieth century is Milton Glaser, who designed the unmistakable I Love NY campaign (1973), and a famous Bob Dylan poster (1968). Glaser took elements of the favored culture of the sixties and seventies.

The advances of the early twentieth century were strongly inspired by technological advances in photography and printing. In the last decade of the century, technology played an analogous role, but this time it was computers. At first it was a step back. Zuzana Licko began using computers to compositions soon, when computer memory was measured in kilobytes and typefaces were created by dots. She and her husband, Rudy VanderLans, founded the pioneering Emigre magazine and kind foundry of the identical name. They played with the extraordinary limitations of computers, releasing an incredible creative power. Emigre magazine became the bible of digital design.

David Carson is the culmination of the movement against contrition sobriety and modern design. Some of his designs for Raygun magazine are intentionally illegible, designed to be more visual than literary experiences.

Present Times

Today, much of the work of graphic designers is assisted by digital tools. The graphic design has modified enormously due to computers. From 1984, with the looks of the primary desktop publishing systems, personal computers steadily replaced all analog in nature technical procedures for digital systems. Thus computers have turn out to be indispensable tools and, with the appearance of hypertext and the net, its functions have been prolonged as a method of communication. In addition, the technology also has been noted with the rise of telecommuting and special crowd sourcing has begun to intervene in work arrangements. This change has increased the necessity to reflect on time, motion and interactivity. Even so, the skilled practice of design has not been essential changes. While the types of production have modified and communication channels have been prolonged, the basic concepts that allow us to know human communication remain the identical.

Job performance and skills

The ability to design is just not innate, but acquired through practice and reflection. Still, it stays an option, one thing potentially. To exploit this power is essential continuing education and practice, as it is vitally difficult to amass by intuition. Creativity, innovation and lateral considering are key skills for graphic designer job performance. Creativity in design exists inside established frames of reference, but greater than anything, is a cultivated skill to seek out unexpected solutions to seemingly intractable problems. This translates into design work of the best level and quality. The creative act is the core of the design process manager but creativity itself is just not an act of design. However, creativity is just not exclusive graphics performance and no career, even though it is totally essential for the correct performance of the design work.

The role that the graphic designer within the strategy of communication is the encoder or interpreter works within the interpretation, organization and presentation of visual messages. His sensitivity to the shape have to be parallel to its sensitivity to the content. This work deals with the planning and structuring of communications, with its production and evaluation. The design work is at all times based on customer demand, demand which eventually established linguistically, either orally or in writing. This signifies that the graphic design transforms a linguistic message in a visible demonstration.

The skilled graphic design rarely works with nonverbal messages. At times the word appears briefly, and in other texts appears as complex. The editor is in lots of cases an important member of the communications team.

The design activity often requires the participation of a team of execs, resembling photographers, illustrators, technical illustrators, including professionals with less related to visual message. The designer is usually a coordinator of varied disciplines that contribute to the production of the visual message. Thus, coordinates its research, design and production, making use of knowledge or specialists in accordance with the necessities of various projects.

Graphic design is interdisciplinary and subsequently the designer must have knowledge of other activities resembling photography, freehand drawing, technical drawing, descriptive geometry, psychology of perception, Gestalt psychology, semiology, typography, technology and communication.

The skilled graphic design is a visible communications specialist and his work is said to all steps of the communication process, through which context, the motion of making a visible object is simply one aspect of that process. This process includes the next:

Defining the issue.

Targeting.

Conception of communication strategy.

Display.

Schedule Production.

Monitoring Production.

Evaluation.

This process requires the designer to own an intimate knowledge of the areas of:

Visual communication.

Communication.

Visual Perception.

Management of economic and human resources.

Technology.

Media.

Assessment techniques.

The 4 guiding principles of graphic design are variables that graphic design skilled should consider when facing a project, these are:

• The Individual: conceived as ethical and aesthetic unit that integrates society which is an element and to whom the visual space is uniform, continuous and connected.
• The advantage: since it responds to a necessity for information and that is communication.
• The atmosphere: since it requires knowledge of physical reality to contribute to the harmony of the habitat, and the fact of other contexts for understanding the structure and meaning of the human environment.
• The economy: it encompasses all facets related to the study of the price and streamlining of processes and materials for the implementation of the weather.