The Modern Age of Graphic Design

The modern era goes by the packaging of ideas that are communicated and Graphic designing is pertinent and prominent, in these times. Graphic designing is one of the areas that encompasses all the aspects of aesthetics, imagination and craft. Graphic designing has evolved from the paintings in the caves of Lascaux to online designing and printing. Graphic designing comprises facets like typography, page layout and visual arts. Graphic designing represents the process and product of creating something for the purpose of communicating.

First glimpses of graphic designing were sighted in the paintings that were found in the caves of Lascaux around 14000 BC. The Book of Kells and the ornate Gospels of the Christian Bible are all vivid examples of graphic designing in the olden times. In the modern era, Herbert Bayer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky are considered the fathers of graphic design. They promoted various stylistic devices and techniques widely adhered to in the twentieth century. The German Bahaus School of design that was established in the year 1937, in America, was pivotal in propagating modern architecture and designs.

Graphic designing is inclusive of aspects like illustrations, types, shapes, colours, textures and even photos. Websites, logos, business cards, advertisments, billboards, posters, magazine layouts, etc, are all the products of the process, graphic designing. Graphic designs communicate a text or and idea effectively, intricately and creatively through visuals. Multimedia designs or interactive designs or WYSIWYG interfaces used in the computer are the modern versions of technology used to produce graphic designs. Dissemination of knowledge is the key objective of graphic designs. Graphic designs are essential in administration, advertising, education, journalism and the internet.

The creative mind of a human is the greatest requirement in graphic designing. The human mind taps its faculty of imagination to render a graphic to convey a text or an idea. The advent of desktop publishing and the arrival of graphic art software applications created a revolution in the field of graphic designing. Computer is used as both business tool and design tool in today’s computer era.
With the aid of graphics software, a person can forge novel illustrations, device new layouts, work on photos,etc. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash and Dreamweaver are used for working on photos, creating illustrations, formulate new layouts, creating interactive websites and for website development respectively by graphic designers.

To be a graphic designer, one has to possess the capability of embodying one’s imagination to the optimum level. A sound knowledge of the cutting edge technologies utilized to enhance the graphic designs sets a new designer in a league of his own. Short terms courses and reading books on graphic designs reinforces one’s knowledge on the subject. For an upcoming graphic designer, Books like Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing and Ethical Guidelines , The Little Know-It-All: Comon Sense for Designers , etc give an insight into graphic designing. For a novice in the field of graphic design, a portfolio in the form of a website, PDF document or a portfolio with printed samples of your work may speak volumes about his or her creativity to a potential employer.

If packaged in a unique manner, an idea is received hands down by anybody in the modern consumer market and that stands a talented graphic designer in good stead. Since the work is creatively satisfying and allows the designers to tap the potential of the avant-garde technology in the field, the career is enormously exciting.