History and Principles of Graphic Design

Graphic design emerged as a distinct profession in the West, closely associated with advertising in the 19th century.

The distinction between advertising, art, graphic design and fine art has disappeared in the 20th and 21st centuries. They share many elements, theories, principles, practices, languages and sometimes the same benefactor or client.

Graphic design emerged in the 19th century as a result of the boom of printing in Europe and the growth of consumer culture.

Graphic design is focused on visual communication and the production of sketches and drawings.

Graphic design has its origins in antiquity and the Middle Ages.

The boom of printing in Europe in the 15th century and the growth of consumer culture in the industrial revolution led to the emergence of graphic design as a profession.

Today, graphic design is closely associated with the development of new technologies.

In the early days of printing, books were expensive to produce and not widely available.

In the mid-15th century, Johannes Gutenberg developed a way to reproduce printed pages at a faster pace using movable type made with a new metal alloy.

In the nineteenth century, William Morris' Kelmscott Press was a leader in graphic design associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.

Will H. Bradley became one of the notable graphic designers in the late nineteenth-century due to creating art pieces in various Art Nouveau styles.

Twentieth century saw graphic design in the modern style gain widespread acceptance and application.

In 1917, Frederick H. Meyer, director and instructor at the California School of Arts and Crafts, taught a class entitled "Graphic Design and Lettering".

Raffe's Graphic Design, published in 1927, was the first book to use "Graphic Design" in its title.

The signage in the London Underground is a classic design example[27] of the modern era.

In the 1920s, Soviet constructivism applied 'intellectual production' in different spheres of production.

Jan Tschichold codified the principles of modern typography in his 1928 book, New Typography.

He later repudiated the philosophy he espoused in this book as fascistic, but it remained influential.

Tschichold, Bauhaus typographers such as Herbert Bayer and László Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky greatly influenced graphic design.

They pioneered production techniques[citation needed] and stylistic devices used throughout the twentieth century.

The professional graphic design industry grew in parallel with consumerism.

This raised concerns and criticisms, notably from within the graphic design community with the First Things First manifesto.

First launched by Ken Garland in 1964, it was re-published as the First Things First 2000 manifesto in 1999 in the magazine Emigre 51.

The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged.

Graphic design is the process of creating a visual representation of communication.

Graphic design can involve the creative presentation of existing text, ornament, and images.

Typography includes type design, modifying type glyphs and arranging type.

Page layout deals with the arrangement of elements (content) on a page.

Tools used in graphic design include computers and software.

Most designers use a hybrid process that combines traditional and computer-based technologies.

Graphic designers create visual representations of ideas and products using a variety of software programs.

Graphic designers are expected to be proficient in software programs for image-making, typography and layout.

Nearly all of the popular and "industry standard" software programs used by graphic designers since the early 1990s are products of Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Adobe Photoshop (a raster-based program for photo editing) and Adobe Illustrator (a vector-based program for drawing) are often used in the final stage.

Some designers across the world use CorelDraw. CorelDraw is a vector graphics editor software developed and marketed by Corel Corporation.

Open source software used to edit the vector graphis is Inkscape.

Primary file format used in Inkscape is Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).

You can import or export the file in any other vector format.

Designers often use pre-designed raster images and vector graphics in their work from online design databases.

Raster images may be edited in Adobe Photoshop, vector logos and illustrations in Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw, and the final product assembled in one of the major page layout programs, such as Adobe InDesign, Serif PagePlus and QuarkXPress.

Graphic designers often become involved in interface design, in an environment commonly referred to as a Graphical user interface (GUI).

Experiential graphic designers try to solve problems that people encounter while interacting with buildings and space (also called environmental graphic design).

As of 2017, median pay was $48,700 per year.