The design has become the skin and beauty of the world. In the 21st century, you can’t find a place that doesn’t have a unique design. You can find it everywhere, from buildings and streets to foods and drinks. It has affected people’s lifestyles and created a ton of golden job opportunities.
The 21st century is the age of graphic design, and if you don’t know about it, you will lose the chance of having a great lifestyle. Today in 2020, there are thousands of design schools all over the globe that can teach you anything you need to know about design.
What is Design?
Based on the Oxford dictionary, the design is a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other objects before it is built or made.
In other words, it is the process of planning to create objects, interactive systems, buildings, and vehicles. Generally, the design is improving the visual appearance and function of messages and information. It is the art of realizing a concept, idea, or theory into a drawing, plan, specification, or model to achieve some objects.
Design is a vast activity made from different branches. One of the most significant branches is graphic design.
First of all, you must ask what graphic design is.
As Wikipedia says, graphic design is the process of visual communication and problem-solving through the use of typography, photography, iconography, and illustration. The field is a subset of visual communication and communication design, but sometimes, the term graphic design is used synonymously.
Graphic design is an art where experts create visual content to communicate messages. It communicates ideas and messages visually. Graphic design is planning ideas and experiences visually and textually. It communicates ideas to inform or inspire audiences through a combination of physical and virtual art forms. The main goal of graphic design is connecting the producer to the customer and conveying the message of the product, event, or campaign.
History of Graphic Design
Though graphic design officially began with the invention of the printing press in 1440, the roots of visual communication are dated back to caveman times.
Pieces of evidence all over the world show that humans always had a desire for art. The early cave paintings from prehistoric times show that from the beginning, humans had an inherent drive toward communication with visuals.
Then in 3300- 300 BCE, Sumerians created one of the first languages for reading trader inventories.
These languages were logographic, meaning that icons represented entire words instead of phonetic sound. It was a cornerstone of modern graphic design as designers still rely on icons to represent words and concepts in limited space.
In 200 CE, China used wood reliefs to print designs on silk clothes, and later paper. Then in 1040, Bi Sheng developed the first moveable type printing press out of porcelain.
Then in the middle ages, typography started to take off as texts were produced and replicated by hand.
In 1100, the world’s first logo invented to represent family houses or territories. Soldiers from different countries and houses used logos on their armors and battle flags to tell everyone apart.
In the 14th century, alehouses made the first signage that represented companies rather than houses. At that time, they were the alternatives for drinking water when more water sources were polluted. King Richard II of England commanded alehouses to have a sign so that people could find them easier.
In 1439, Johannes Gutenberg brought a moveable type to Europe and introduced mass communication to Western culture. People didn’t need to rely on lengthy scholarly reproductions of books. It was the birth of graphic design.
In the late 1400s, the printing industry started using logos for marking their documents. In that time, how well your logo was printed reflected how well everything was printed.
Then in the 1620s, the printing press created the coranto or the precursor to the newspaper, and these corantos developed the first printed advertisements.
In 1837, Chromolithography opened new doors for advertising. Before, visuals were represented by the tech of the time and showed basic clarity instead of touching on complex emotions. But Chromolithography or the ability to print in color produced realism in graphic design and allowed advertising to have an artistic usage of colors.
In 1903, graphic design entered the modern era as the first graphic design agency named The Wiener Werkstatte emerged in Austria. The organization was formed from visual artists including painters, architects, and early graphic designers, and held great influence over establishing design standards for upcoming generations of artists
Then in 1919, the Staatliches Bauhaus established in Germany intending to create a Gesamtkunstwerk which is an artistic ideal that encompasses existing art forms into one perfect work
Then in 1922, the book designer Wiliam Addison Dwiggins used the term graphic design for the first time in his article “New Kind of Printing Calls for New Design” to describe his exact role in structuring and managing the visuals in book design.
From the 1950s, the world started its slow development to the digital era that we see today. The invention of home computers is an advancement that can be compared to the invention of the printing press. Technology improvement opened a new age for more communication and granting access to art styles and digital software for new methods of creating art
As an example, Adobe Photoshop first released in 1990 and changed graphic design.
Photo manipulating also created a new subcategory of graphic design. It blended elements of photography, illustration, and CGI.
With the invention of the internet around the turn of the century, designers took out of MTV book and started creating edgy designs to draw the younger generation into the world wide web.
The past and present of graphic design bring us up to date, but one area is still a mystery: the future of graphic design.
The improvement of visual communication from cave paintings to digital software is a great inspiration, but the is unknown. The massive improvement in the graphic design shows a brilliant future. Tough today graphic design means hard work, though feedback, and countless late night in front of the screen, the result might bring another victory in graphic design.
Zahara Marketing 