viz.

By Christopher Micklethwait

Graphic design is a communicative practice characterized by the mixed use of text and images, organized spatially on a grid, with various rhetorical goals ranging from political propaganda to more mundane forms of publicity such as commercial advertizing and product packaging. Though it is in essence a plastic art, given its intimacy with mass communication graphic design tends foremost toward serial reproduction and away from the creation of unique objects of art (see Walter Benjamin’s famous essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" for a substantive analysis of this difference). By this general definition, graphic design is a pre-modern practice that reached its high water mark with the illuminated texts of medieval Europe, Asia and the Muslim world. Although graphic design is not an exclusively modern art, the invention and evolution first of the printing press and then mechanized manufacturing, photography, television and the Internet have all contributed to making graphic design one of the most ubiquitous human cultural practices.

If visual rhetoric concerns itself with content, then graphic design concerns itself with form. The graphic designer’s art consists of the formal categories of typography, layout, and chromatics. Jan Tschichold, the first great theorist of modern typography, saw in 1928 that "[t]he essence of the New Typography is clarity" as opposed to the old typography "whose aim was 'beauty' and whose clarity did not attain the high level we require today" on account of "the extraordinary amount of print, which demands the greatest economy of expression" (The New Typography (1928), The University of California Press, 1987: 64). In practical terms, typography depends upon the communicative qualities of various font styles and sizes and their instrumental use in various print media.

Layout considers the spatial arrangement of graphic and textual elements within a conceptual grid (most often invisible). Layout seeks to make strategic use of space for harmony and emphasis, and gives graphic design its geometric nature.

Chromatics combines color theory and technical specificities of print media. Like layout, chromatics plays on the emotive and emphatic effects of hues, tones, and the harmonious and inharmonious juxtaposition of colors. Chromatics also takes into account the physicial limitations and specificities of each medium of print. Different media render color differently, so the graphic designer must be aware of the differences, for example, between analog and digital television,dot matrix and laser printing, and various screen resolutions.

Also see the unit-length graphic design assignment using InDesign to create proposal arguments.

For further reading:

Caban, Geoffrey. World Graphic Design: Contemporary Graphics from Africa, the Far East, Latin America, and the Middle East. New York: Merrell Publishers, 2004.

Drucker, Johanna. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009.

Eskilson, Stephen. Graphic Design: A New History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Gill, Bob. Graphic Design as a Second Language. Mulgrave: Images Pub., 2003.

Lupton, Ellen. Graphic Design: The New Basics. NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008.

McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962.

Samara, Timothy. Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop (2002). Gloucester, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2005.

Tschichold, Jan. The New Typography: A Handbook for Modern Designers (1928). Trans. Ruari McLean. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987.

Some web-based materials:

Simpson, David L. "Typography, Layout, and Graphic Design." The New Arts of Persuasion: Contemporary Media, Communications and Rhetoric. DePaul University. Date unknown. http://condor.depaul.edu/~dsimpson/pers/syllabus.html

AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts). AIGA: The Professional Association for Design. http://www.aiga.org/

Designorati. http://designorati.com/

“Free Adobe InDesign Tutorials.” Layers Magazine. http://www.layersmagazine.com/category/indesign/

Eye Magazine: The International Review of Graphic Design. 2001-2009. http://www.eyemagazine.com/home.php