Imagine if graphic design never existed? How boring would the world be without it!
Everything would be white and boring with no colour in the world! There would be nothing to persuade us to buy products or services… How would we even know which products were better than other products without graphic design?
Design and branding influences our buying choices… it influences our experiences, whether good or bad. It influences what we say to others about products and services we’ve tried. Without graphic design everything would be the same… plain, boring, uninviting, uniform and lifeless!
Graphic design has been around for years with designs being created as early as our human existence from the caves in Lascaux, to Rome’s Trajan Column and so on. The term ‘graphic design’ was coined by William Addison Dwiggins in 1922. Raffe’s Graphic Design, published in 1927, was the first book to use “Graphic Design” in its title.
Years ago everything was hand drawn with proper typographic designers and a lot of strategy was involved in design too. But with the introduction of technology several years ago, design has moved on and has become even more important on an every day basis.
Designers even nowadays are expected to do a lot more than just design. They’re also expected to code websites, animate and more. When I studied graphic design over 10 years ago, we studied graphic design and nothing else. I am what you would see as a traditional graphic designer in that I use traditional pencil and paper to sketch out initial ideas before creating them on my iMac and without the skills to do that we would be in a non-design world.
It is so scary to even think about the world without graphic design, especially for me. I was a real lover of art when I was growing up and I would sit with my watercolour paints and pastels and get creative on a Saturday afternoon at the kitchen table. It was only when it came to choosing what subjects to take for AS Level that I even found out about Graphics properly. I chose to study it and never looked back. To me, it opened up a whole new world of possibilities with the ability to think differently and portray messages through creative and visual ways.
Graphic design is so powerful and has a huge impact on us without us even realising. But this also applies to all areas of design – interior design, product design, website design and so on.
Take Apple for example… they have completely transformed the way in which we view modern technology in the world with seamless, high quality, well thought out aesthetic designs and every minute detail is considered; the actual design of the products, the interior of their shops, the look and feel of their website along with the packaging for all their products too.
After reading this blog post, take some time to really look around you and at your surroundings. Look at everything that has colour, wording and photographs on… those products have been carefully and meticulously designed with people and us in mind. Embrace that for a second… That is the power of design.