What is Graphic Design in the Year 2000?
By: Brandon Luhring (Dec. 13, 2000)
The current state of the graphic design industry is a bustling one. One can see the influence of a designer in nearly everything they do. According to Matthew Soar, author of The Impotence of Being Earnest: a Response, “we live and breathe design. Few of the experiences we value at home, at leisure, in the city or the mall are free of [graphic design's] alchemical touch.”
As I sit here typing this paper, I look around. I see magazine covers, computer casings, CDs, food packaging, picture frames, along with many other objects that are plastered with and/or completely made of “design.”
I think that Jessica Helfand's recent article for the AIGA entitled “What is Graphic Design?” states this dominance wonderfully:
“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 web sites, 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, demand 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.”
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How has graphic design become so entrenched in our society? That's an easy one. Capitalism and consumerism run our culture. Designers at their core are communicators. Businesses and organizations need to effectively communicate their products and ideas to the hordes of consumers out there. That is why they hire a graphic design firm to creatively mold their products to communicate the company's intent. Whether it be social issues or merely visual intrigue that the designers implement is irrelevant here. Businesses know that a designer must influence every product or promotion coming out if they mean to be successful in communicating properly and putting on a presence of professionalism.
Knowing that this strategy works, the marketers, then, saturate our daily lives with designed elements such as TV commercials, magazine ads, posters, and the shape of the shampoo bottle we use.
“The graphic design profession occupies a unique position of specialized communication services including marketing, public relations, advertising and the newly emerging multimedia. Graphic designers at their best hold attributes such as creativity, analytical power, business acumen, relationship skills, technical discipline and organizational ability within their range of skills and talents,” states John Frostell, National President of AGDA. With the wide array of disciplines and talents necessary for good design, it is no wonder that it fills in every nook and cranny in our daily lives.
Graphic design in the year 2000 is still firmly holding on to the Digital Revolution, which began in the 1960s. The computer, with its many peripherals, has changed the way many look at design. Some designers have completely succumbed to this technology and traded in their tech pens and X-acto knives for a Wacom tablet and a printer. Designs are now easier and quicker to complete. Many variations of a design can be made in seconds as compared to the lengthy times of changing a design in the traditional fashion. Jeff Weiss of PixArt.com claims that this is the very reason that applicants are now bombarding design schools.
As a creative designer, I feel no intimidation with these increasing numbers. “Good design, whether it's executed with a sketchbook and pencil or a Wacom Intuos tablet and pen, begins with a great idea. Technology is meaningless without the talented people who shape it,” retorts Sarah Morton in her article for HOW magazine. If this new abundance of students are entering this field because the computer has made it easy, then I don't fear loosing a job to them one bit. Designers who want “easy” will make easy, while other designers who want quality will get all the jobs. Software programmers can't do our job for us; our job is based on creativity and innovation. If we are true designers we are going to put a lot more effort into our designs than utilizing a Photoshop filter or two.
Design is still not solely contained by the technology of the Digital Revolution. Our designs are still strongly influenced by many periods and individuals from the past. Paul Rand and the ideals of the New York School, which started in the 1940s is still extremely influential on our current designs. Its simplified, yet intriguing, iconic style can be seen in many of our contemporary pieces.
The work of Kauffer and Cassandre as well as other designers in Pictorial Modernism were producing pieces that would still work today. They often abstracted images to near silhouettes and worked largely in two-dimensional planes; much like the majority of design today.
So many other movements are still holding a strong place in our designs, like the Bauhaus, Cubism, Constructivism, De Stijl, and the Isotype movement. All of which played a major role in getting current design where it is.
Many people have begun to disrespect the field of graphic design. They say that we are too trendy, focus on sex, and are reliant solely on the computer, or we are artists who have “sold out!” It is true that many designers take these routes. Yet, design, at its heart, is still much more than these naysayers give it credit for. Good design isn't reliant on anything. It can be made on a computer. It can be made with cut paper. It can even be made with a stick in the mud. It's not reliant on any current trends or styles. A good designer can make a working solution with anything and under any restrictions.
“I believe that one chooses to become a graphic designer because one loves type, image, and form, and the act of using them to craft messages and propagate ideas,” says Steven Heller. If the designer is in it just for the money, then the creativity won't be there for long. You have to love the “tools” of the trade if you want to be successful. I certainly hope that the designers who are in it for the “love of the game” are the one's who will win out and be remembered for their contributions to society and the industry.
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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