What is Graphic Design?

What is Graphic Design?

"Graphic art term current with several meanings in the literature of the visual arts. In the context of the fine art, it usually refers to those arts that rely essentially on line or tone rather than colour-i.e. drawing and the various forms of engraving. Some writers, however, exclude drawing from this definition, so that the term 'graphic art' is used to cover the various processes by which prints are created. In another sense, the term-sometimes shortened to 'graphics'- is used to cover the entire field of commercial printing, including text as well as illustrations." (Chilvers, 2009, p268)

Graphic design gives information, persuades, organize, stimulates, locates, identifies, attracts attention and provides pleasure to the viewer. Graphic design is the combination of technology and art together by creative means to communicate ideas.Graphic art was first made technologically reproducible by woodcut, long before written language became reproducible by movable type.(Preziosi, 2009, p.436)

Images:

 dominate our life,

 tell us how to behave,

 what to think

 and how to feel. (RebitedJazz 2013)

There are two types of communications the verbal and the visual. All the visual communication falls under graphic design. Therefore visual communication are media which are visually there to be used as communication, some examples of Graphic design are posters, letters and business logos. Drawings, paintings, photography and computer generated images are the elements used for graphic design. With the correct use of typography,images and with space a message can easily be done.

This subject isn't a modern creation in fact it started with the human race, it is part of our history and traditions. The earliest forms of graphics go back to the gave of Lascaux. No one knows what this primitive art really means but one will understand that there is a message behind these murals. Primitive humans felt the need to communicate and understood the powerful use of the image by inventing the technology of pigment and brush making.

Egyptians drew images as well with the help of hieroglyphics this was the earliest type of writing which was a mixture of drawings but symbols at the same time representing a word or phrase. Writing was later evolved with the mesopotamian invention of cuneiform and later on with the Phoenicians to the now a days letter forms which were created by the aid of the classics and the invention of Latin. Alphabet is one of the most used elements in graphic design. In fact graphic designers  make emphasis on the use of what type of typography to use, this started to be practised in manuscrips like the Lindisfarne and even in posters made after constructivism. Typography is the style and appearance of printed matter it is also the art or procedure of arranging type or processing data and printing from it. Serif and San Serif are two opposite letter forms that gives typography a character.

Graphic Design is part of our daily life. It is found in every form, in a humble thing like sweet wrappers to huge things like billboards and the clothes that you're wearing.

Bibliography

AIGA,2014,WHAT IS GRAPHIC DESIGN?,[online], Available at:<http://www.aiga.org/guide-whatisgraphicdesign/> [Accessed 1November 2014].

Chilvers.I, 2009,Dictionary of art and artists,4th edition, New York:Oxford university Press.

Gombrich, E.H.,2010, The Story of Art, 16th edition, London: Phaidon Press Limited.

Patent Office & 2009 Creative Commons,2012, Graphic Design history,[online], Available at:<http://www.designhistory.org/>[Accessed 1 November 2014].

Preziosi.D, 2009,The Art of Art History,2nd edition, New York:Oxford university Press.