What is graphic design for ?
One of the questions that comes out of everyone’s mouth when they hear that I’m studying it.
First “graphic design is a type of language, you use it to tell somone about something that they want, or that you think they want or even that someone else thinks they want. You could begin to list things more specifically, like this: It’s for selling things and ideas to make money or to further political and social agendas. But then you realize: It’s also for critiquing such behaviours. It’s for making things clear - saving lives even - but it’s also for enriching our everyday lives through the addition of layers of complexity, nuance and subtlety.
It’s for helping people find their way and comprehend data, but it’s also for helping them get lost in new ideas, fantastical narratives or landscapes, and to question and contest what information is presented.”
Graphic design is embed in all aspects of social life. From the signs that tells a driver to stop at intersections and the label that show’s how much sugar is in our food, to the title that graphically let us grasp the essence and theme of movies.
The thought of design having a clear purpose or being for something is archaic. It’s thinking that belongs to a time where fundamental truths existed, design is not as simple as to be corralled into a single definition of use. Design is for communicating with people: with a specific or general audience, participants, costumers, subscribers, passers-by. It’s for communities: small like locals or special interest groups, and larger ones, like populations and global consumers. Then it comes to the point on how much you treat that audience.
There is designers that design for themselves and pay no heed to their audience, some design for others designers, some design for clients concepts or wishes of the audience in question. Others, like myself, find which is gonna be the receivers of their work and what appeals to them, and even ask the same ones for feedback to evolve their work.
“Graphic design helps people to distinguish ideas, make choices, orient themselves in the day to day. It happens that graphic design can also create an enormous amount of pleasure and satisfaction in those who generate it and those who see it.”
From what I see, graphic design exists to express ideas or to distinguish them, even if someone reaches the same idea as anyone else is our function as graphic designers to make their idea distinguishable and unique as possible from the others that surround it. It gives a presence to it. If someone as a place they want to share with the world, the graphic designer signs the audience through the facility to make the experience more enjoyable and memorable.
If a social issue arises and need urgent attention, the graphic designer is the poster or the free newspaper that reaches the public.
People around me often think of graphic design as one of the functions of marketing, historians see graphic design as a “social ephemera”-things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time- and graphic designers see it as art. I see graphic design as the art and practice of planning and projecting ideas and experiences with visual and textual content.
