From the course: Introduction to Graphic Design: Concepts

What is graphic design?

From the course: Introduction to Graphic Design: Concepts

Start my 1-month free trial

What is graphic design?

“

- [Narrator] Well, you may think that Graphic Design is all about layouts, topography, images and color. This is only partly true as they are indeed the tools of graphic designers but the business of Graphic Design is actually about problem solving and the problems that graphic designers are challenged with solving are associated with communicating messages. So let's start here by taking a look at a basic model of communication. There is a sender and the sender could be anything or anyone from an individual, a small business, a large corporation or any other organization that wants to send a message to an audience. That message may be, I'm a plumber, hire me to do plumbing work. Eat great food at Sally's Diner. Buy our amazing products or something like these items are prohibited on aircraft. If they would just print it as words on a blank sheet of paper like this, they would be indistinctive and unappealing. The message would most likely be lost or not understood. So here in my adaption of that model specific to communication artists that's another more modern way perhaps of saying graphic designers. Where the problem that Graphic Design solves is either to encode a message in generally one of two ways to enrich a simple message making it more attractive or to simplify complex information giving clarity to aid, understanding but both should be compelling. The audience then has to be able to decode the message although and especially in Advertising and Marketing there is sometimes an advantage in not making this easy as we are all problem-solving creatures ourselves and sometimes cracking the code as it were can be a powerful tool itself. Now you may, at some point in the future or maybe even now call yourself a graphic designer, a communication artists, a brand stylist or some other term but what you will be above all else is someone who works to solve communication problems, using layouts, typography, images and color.

Contents