Graphic design

Plan:1. Introduction2. What is graphic design?3. Graphic design3.1 Classic theory of design3.2 Elements of design3.4 Principles of design4. Where to find graphic design5. Early history6. 20th century7. Soviet Constructivism 8. Computer programs9. Conclusion10. Literature used

Introduction

I have chosen “Graphic design” theme , because this theme is interesting, it would be useful to study this for everybody in my chosen theme I analyze, what is graphic design, briefly I will familiarize you with graphic design history, with programs used, by graphic designers, writing this work I used different kinds of literature: books, magazines, internet…..I have learned to choose and systemize needed literature, independently dredge my knowledge in particular themes, form independent work skills.

What is graphic design?“Graphic design is the most ubiquitous of all the arts. It responds to needs at once personal and public, embraces concerns both economic and ergonomic, and is informed by many disciplines, including art and architecture, philosophy and ethics, literature and language, science and politics and performance. “Graphic design is everywhere, touching everything we do, everything we see, everything we buy: we see it on billboards and in Bibles, on taxi receipts and on websites, on birth certificates and on gift certificates, on the folded circulars inside jars of aspirin and on the thick pages of children’s chubby board books. “Graphic design is the boldly directional arrows on street signs and the blurred, frenetic typography on the title sequence to E.R. It is the bright green logo for the New York Jets and the monochromatic front page of the Wall Street Journal. It is hang-tags in clothing stores, postage stamps and food packaging, fascist propaganda posters and brainless junk mail. “Graphic design is complex combinations of words and pictures, numbers and charts, photographs and illustrations that, in order to succeed, demands the clear thinking of a particularly thoughtful individual who can orchestrate these elements so they all add up to something distinctive, or useful, or playful, or surprising, or subversive or somehow memorable.

“Graphic design is a popular art and a practical art, an applied art and an ancient art. Simply put, it is the art of visualizing ideas.” Jessica Helfand

Graphic designGraphic design is the applied art of arranging image and text to communicate a message, or facilitate understanding. It may be applied in any media, such as print, digital media, motion pictures, animation, product design, packaging, and information signs. Graphic design as a practice can be traced back to the origin of the written word, but only in the late 19th century did it become identified as a separate entity.Graphic design is a porous discipline, and overlaps significantly with other disciplines, including, but not limited to, the visual arts, architecture, interior design, illustration, photography, human-computer interaction, user interface design, information design and interaction design. Designers may produce ethnographies as part of the qualitative research for defining needs or features for a product, service or communication object. A relatively recent development is the closely related practice of experience design.The fundamental principles of design are alignment, balance, color, contrast, emphasis, movement, pattern, proportion, proximity, repetition, rhythm, texture, unity, and white space.

Classic theory of designAccording to the classic theory of design (or graphic design, visual design), the visual pleasantness and other abstract qualities people perceive in a work of design are a result of how the composition of the elements of design follows the principles of design. There is no authorities classic theory of design, since the recognition of these qualities has existed for thousands of years. First conceptualized accounts have probably appeared in early books about architecture, and composition in art.

Elements of designThe elements of design are the fundamental, isolated parts or aspects into which any work of design can be decomposed to. An element of design may appear explicitly or implicitly (e.g. the boundary between two areas of contrasting color is an implicit line).

-Point -Line -Form (shape) -Texture -Color

Principles of designThe principles of design are general characterizations of relations between elements in a composition.-Balance -Rhythm -Proportion -Dominance -Unity

Where to find graphic design– Record albums– Audio tapes & CD covers– Counter and floor displays– Newspapers– Book jackets and interiors– Museum exhibition– Packages– Film titles– Newsletter– Journal– Magazines– Animation– College publications– Signage in public spaces– Supermarket signs & décor– Poster and flyers– Business stationery– Sign and sign system– Mail order catalog– Corporate images– Labels/ maps/ graphs– Presentation materials– Conference materials– Slides/ overheads– Billboards– Advertisements– Direct mail– Calendars– Menus– Greeting cards– Stationery– Stamps– Labels– Annual reports

Early history

Saul Bass’s poster for the film, The Man with the Golden Arm – a highly regarded work of graphic design. The film was also notable for its groundbreaking title sequence, also by Bass.The compelling—if somewhat obscure— paintings in the caves of Lascaux around 14,000 BC and the birth of written language in the third or fourth millennium BC, are both significant milestones in the history of graphic design and other fields which hold roots to graphic design.The Book of Kells is a very beautiful and very early example of graphic design in a form that would be acceptable even today. The Book is a lavishly illustrated hand-written copy of the Christian Bible created by Irish monks in the ninth century AD.Johann Gutenberg’s introduction of movable type in Europe made books widely available. The earliest books produced by Gutenberg’s press and others of the era (the Incunabula) became the benchmark by which the design of future books, even as late as the 20th century, would be judged. Graphic design of this era is called either Old Style (especially the typefaces which these early typographers used), or Humanist, after the predominant philosophical school of the time.

Graphic design after Gutenberg saw a gradual evolution rather than any significant change, until the late 19th century when, especially in Britain, an effort was made to create a firm division between the fine and the applied arts.Piet Mondrian, born in 1872, is often called the father of graphic design. Although he was a fine artist (not a graphic designer) his use of grids inspired the basic structure of the modern advertising layout known also as the grid system, used commonly today by graphic designers.From 1891 to 1896 William Morris’ Kelmscott Press published some of the most significant of the graphic design products of the Arts and Crafts movement, and made a very lucrative business of creating books of great stylistic refinement and selling them to the wealthy for a premium. Morris proved that a market existed for works of graphic design and helped pioneer the separation of design from production and from fine art. The work of the Kelmscott Press is characterized by its decadence and by its obsession with historical styles. This historicism was, however, historically important as it amounted to the first significant reaction to the stale state of nineteenth-century graphic design. Morris’ work, along with the rest of the Private Press movement, directly influenced Art Nouveau and is indirectly responsible for developments in early twentieth century graphic design in general.

20th century

Famous SS Normandie poster by Adolphe Muron Cassandre.Modern Design of the early 20th century, much like the fine art of the same period, was a reaction against the decadence of typography and design of the late 19th century. The hallmark of early modern typography is the sans-serif typeface. Early Modern (not to be confused with the other modern era of the 18th and 19th centuries) typographers such as Edward Johnston and Eric Gill after him were inspired by vernacular and industrial typography of the latter nineteenth century. The signage in the London Underground is a classic of this era and used a font designed by Edward Johnston in 1916.

Jan Tschichold codified the principles of modern typography in his 1928 book, New Typography. He later repudiated the philosophy he espoused in this book as being fascistic, but it remained very influential. Tschichold, Bauhaus typographers such as Herbert Bayer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and El Lissitzky are the fathers of graphic design as we know it today. They pioneered production techniques and stylistic devices used throughout the twentieth century. Today, although the computer has altered production forever, the experimental approach to design they pioneered is more relevant than ever. The dynamism, the experimentation, and even very specific things like typeface choice (Helvetica has seen a recent revival, it was an early design based indirectly on 19th century industrial typography) and strict, orthogonal composition.

The following years saw graphic design in the modern style gain widespread acceptance and application. A booming post-World War II American economy established a greater need for graphic design, mainly advertising and packaging. The emigration of the German Bauhaus school of design to Chicago in 1937 brought a “mass-produced” minimalism to America; sparking a wild fire of postmodern architecture and design. Notable names in mid-century modern design are Adrian Frutiger, designer of the typefaces Univers and Frutiger; and Josef Müller-Brockmann, who designed posters in a severe yet accessible manner typical of the 1950s and 1960s.The reaction to the increasing severity of graphic design was slow but inexorable. The origins of post-modern typography can be traced back as far as the humanist movement of the 1950s. Notable among this group is Hermann Zapf who designed two typefaces that remain ubiquitous—Palatino (1948) and Optima (1952). By blurring the line between serif and sans-serif typefaces and re-introducing organic lines into typography these designs did more to ratify modernism than they did to rebel.An important point was reached in graphic design with the publishing of the First things first 1964 Manifesto which was a call to a more radical form of graphic design and criticized the ideas of value-free design. This was massively influential on a generation of new graphic designers and contributed to the founding of publications such as Emigre magazine.

I Love New York campaign by Milton Glaser.Another notable designer of the latter 20th century is Milton Glaser who designed the unmistakable I Love NY ad campaign (1973), and a famous Bob Dylan poster (1968). Glaser took stylistic hints from popular culture from the 1960s and 70s.Advances in the early 20th century were largely inspired by technological advances in printing and also in photography. In the last decade of the same century, technology played a similar role, but this time it was the computer, and at first it was largely a step backwards. Zuzana Licko worked very early using computers for layout, in the days when computer memory was measured in kilobytes and typefaces were created using dots rather than lines. Together with her husband Rudy VanderLans they founded the pioneering Emigre magazine and the Emigre type foundry. They played with the extraordinary limitations of computers as something which, in itself, could provide creative freedom. Emigre magazine became the bible for digital design as the technology rapidly advanced to the point where the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.David Carson is, in a sense, the culmination of the movement against the restrictiveness of modern design—some of his designs for Raygun magazine are intentionally illegible, featuring typography designed to be visual rather than literary experiences.

Soviet ConstructivismMainly in the 1920’s, in Soviet Russia, Soviet Constructivism applied ‘intellectual production’ in different spheres of production. The movement saw individualistic art as useless in revolutionary Russia and thus moved towards creating objects for utilitarian purposes. They designed buildings, theater sets, posters, fabrics, clothing, furniture, etc.

Computer programsAlthough they were very limiting at first, as computing power increased and software such as Adobe Photoshop emerged, it was evident exactly what kind of creative freedom and power that computers could provide. Image manipulation and 3D image creation using a computer demonstrated possibilities that had previously been unachievable. Another enormous development that computers provided to designers was the ability for them to set their own type, instantly seeing how it affected their design or layout, which allowed for new and more radical use of typography. Computers are now considered to be an indispensable tool used in the graphic design industry. However, a select few continue using manual and traditional tools for their creative endeavors: Jean Benoit-Levy, Studio Cyan and Milton Glaser, among others.

Modern graphic design has evolved into a profession that is done almost entirely on computers. Common tools include Apple Mac computers, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe PageMaker, QuarkXPress, Macromedia Freehand and Fireworks, Paint Shop Pro, Corel Graphics Suite, Macromedia Flash, The GIMP and many other software programsConclusion

As you can see, I analyzed basis of graphic design. Origin of it , began long ago, before Christ ,and it continues till our days, as you can see this sphere graduated to enormous hights, and its still grows. In my work you can find the different kinds of producing graphic design. Like in old times it was so primitive and now , you can create it by different programs. Usage of graphic design is enormous , every day you meet that. It develops civilization, urbanization , In my mind , it decompletes 21 century. Progress is based on graphic design , we can see, by graphic design , what is the level of civilization. When you are going deeper and deeper , I mean , analyzing graphic design , you just can’t stop. I wanted to show the importance of my chosen theme, and I believe I have succeeded, maybe I convinced myself about the importance of it and because of that choose this sphere as my future job. But I don’t think that somebody can argue and convince me that I am wrong.

Literature: 1. Graphic design on the desktop: A Guide for the Non-Designer2. http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/whatisgraphicdesign3. http://en.wihipedia.org/wiki/Graphic-design