Graphic layout is a profession whose business is the act of designing, programming, and create visual communications, normally produced by industrial means and intended to communicate specific messages to specific social groups, with a transparent purpose. This is the activity that empowers graphically communicate thoughts, facts and values processed and synthesized in terms of form and communication, societal, cultural, economic, aesthetic and technological. Also known as visual communication style, because some connect the term figure only to the printing business, and realize visual messages are channeled through many websites, not just print.

Given the massive and rapid increase in the market of data, the demand for graphic designers is greater than ever, especially because of the evolution of new technologies and the necessity to pay attention to the individual aspects which are beyond the competence of engineers who build them.

Some classifications are widely used graphic design: advertising design, editorial design, corporate identity design, web design, packaging design, typographic design, signage design, multimedia design, among others.

Graphic Design History

The definition of the graphic design profession is quite recent, in what concerns their preparation, their activities and goals. Even though there is no consensus on the exact date of the arrival of graphic layout, a few dating throughout the interwar period. Others know that starts to identify such into the late nineteenth century.

Arguably particular graphic communications purposes have their origin from Paleolithic cave paintings and the birth of written language in the next millennium BC. C. But the differences in working procedures and training demanded auxiliary sciences are such that it is not possible to clearly recognize the present graphic designer with ancient man, using xylograph fifteenth century or even the lithographer 1890.

The diversity of view reflects the fact that some view as a product of graphic design and all other graphical presentation just those that arise as a consequence of the use of a model of industrial manufacturing, those visual signals that have been"projected" contemplating needs of distinct types: productive symbolic ergonomic contextual etc..

Background

A page in the Book of Kells: Folio 114, with decorated text includes the Tunc dicit illis. An illustration of artwork and page layout of the Middle Ages.

The Book of Kells - A Bible handwritten richly exemplified by Irish monks in the nineteenth century CE-is for some a very beautiful and ancient example of graphic design concept. It's a graphic demonstration of great artistic value, higher quality, which a version for learning how to design-for even surpasses in quality to a number of the current-editorial productions, and also from a practical point of view contemporary This graphic piece responds to all demands presented the group of people who left it, yet others believe it would be graphic design product, since they understand that their layout isn't adjusted to the idea of current graphic design endeavor.

The background of typography-and from transitive, also the history of the book-is closely linked to graphic layout, this may be because there are virtually no images designs which do not contain such items graphics. Hence, when talking about the history of graphic design, typography also cited the Trajan column, medieval miniatures, Johannes Gutenberg's printing press, the Growth of the publication business, the posters Parisian Arts Movement and Crafts (Arts and Crafts), William Morris, Bauhaus, etc.."

The introduction of movable type by Johannes Gutenberg made books cheaper to produce, and facilitate their dissemination. The first printed books (incunabula) scored the role model to the twentieth century. Graphic design of this era has become known as Old Style (especially the typefaces which these early typographers used), or Humanist, due to the predominant philosophical school of the time.

After Gutenberg, no significant changes were seen until the late nineteenth century, particularly in Britain, there was an effort to create a clear division between the fine and applied arts.

In the 19th Century

First page of the book "The Nature of Gothic" by John Ruskin, published by the Kelmscott Press. The Arts and Crafts intended to revive the medieval art, inspiration in nature and manual labor.

During the nineteenth century visual message design was entrusted alternately two professionals: the artist or the publisher. The first was formed as an artist and the second as a craftsman, often both in the same schools of arts and crafts. For the printer as art was the use of ornaments and selecting fonts printed in his compositions. The artist saw typography as a child and paying more attention to ornamental and illustrative elements.

Between 1891 and 1896, the William Morris Kelmscott Press published some of the most significant graphic products Arts and Crafts Movement (Arts and Crafts), and established a lucrative business based on the design of books of great stylistic refinement and selling them to the upper classes as luxury items. Morris proved that a market existed for works of graphic design, establishing the separation of design from production and the fine arts. The work of the Kelmscott Press is characterized by its recreation of historic styles, especially medieval.

First Vanguards

Poster for the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Made by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec with color lithography in 1891. Thanks to Art Nouveau, graphic design and visual clarity gained by the composition.

Isotype of the Bauhaus. Founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius, is considered the birthplace of the graphic design profession.

Given Poster for Matinée. Made by Theo van Doesburg in January 1923. The free font organization, expresses the spirit of the Dada movement, irrationality, for freedom and oppose the status quo and visual expressions of the time.

Corporate identity design for Lufthansa, by the Development Group 5 of the HFG Ulm. Ulm School was an inflection point in the history of design, since there is outlined the design profession through scientific methodology.

Current pictograms design for the National Park Service of the United States. The idea to simplify the symbols forms developed during the 1950s.

The design of the early twentieth century, as well as the fine arts of the same period, was a reaction against the decadence of typography and design of the late nineteenth century.

The interest in ornamentation and the proliferation of measurement changes and typographical style one piece design, synonymous with good design, it was an idea that was maintained until the late nineteenth century. The Art Nouveau, with its clear desire stylistic was a movement that contributed to higher order visual composition. While maintaining a high level of formal complexity, did so within a strong visual consistency, discarding the variation of typographic styles in one graphic piece.

Art movements of the second decade of the twentieth century and the political turmoil that accompanied them, generated dramatic changes in graphic design. The Dada, De Stijl, Suprematism, Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, the Bauhaus and created a new vision that influenced all branches of the visual arts and design. All these movements opposed to the decorative arts and popular, as well as the Art Nouveau, which under the influence of the new interest in geometry evolved into the Art Deco. All these movements were a revisionist and transgressive spirit in all arts of the time. This period also publications and manifestos proliferated through which artists and educators expressed their opinions.

During the 1930s developed for the composition interesting aspects of graphic design. The graphic style change was significant because it shows a reaction against eclecticism ornamentalist organicism and the time and proposes a more stripped and geometric. This style, connected with Constructivism, Suprematism, Neoplasticism, De Stijl and Bauhaus exerted a lasting influence and inescapable in the development of twentieth century graphic design. Another important element in relation to professional practice, was the increasing use of visual form as communication element. This item appeared mostly in the designs produced by the Dada and De Stijl.

The symbol of modern typography is the sans serif font or serif, inspired by industrial types of the late nineteenth century. Highlights include Edward Johnston, author of the font for the London Underground, and Eric Gill.