Graphic design is a profession whose firm is the act of programming, designing, and create visual communications, generally produced by industrial means and intended to communicate specific messages to specific social groups, with a clear function. This is the activity that empowers graphically communicate thoughts, facts and values processed and synthesized concerning communication and form, societal, cultural, economic, aesthetic and technological. Also known as visual communication style, because some connect the term figure only to the printing business, and understand that visual messages are steered through many media, not only print.

Given the enormous and rapid growth in the market of information, the demand for graphic designers is greater than ever, especially because of the evolution of new technologies and the need to pay attention to the individual factors which are beyond the competency of engineers that develop 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 rather recent, in what concerns their preparation, their activities and goals. Even though there is no consensus on the precise date of the birth of graphic layout, a few relationship throughout the interwar period. Others know that starts to identify such to the late nineteenth century.

Arguably specific graphic communications functions have their origin from Paleolithic cave paintings and the birth of written language in the third millennium BC. C. However, the differences in operating methods and training demanded auxiliary sciences are such it is not possible to clearly identify the current graphic designer with prehistoric man, with xylograph fifteenth century or the lithographer 1890.

The diversity of opinion reflects the fact that some see as a product of graphic design and all other graphical demonstration just those that arise as a consequence of the use of a version of industrial production, those visual signals that have been"projected" considering needs of distinct kinds: productive symbolic ergonomic contextual etc..

Background

A page in the Book of Kells: Folio 114, with decorated text includes the Tunc dicit illis. A good example of art and page design of the Middle Ages.

The Book of Kells - A Bible handwritten richly exemplified by Irish monks in the ninth century CE-is for a very beautiful and ancient example of graphic design concept. It is a graphic demonstration of excellent artistic worth, high quality, and that even a version for learning to design-for even surpasses in quality to many of the current-editorial productions, and also from a practical point of view modern This picture piece responds to all needs presented the group of people who made it, yet others believe that it would be graphic design merchandise, since they know that their design isn't adjusted to the notion of current graphic design endeavor.

The background of typography-and by transitive, also the history of the book-is closely linked to graphic layout, this might be because there are no graphics designs that do not include 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 book 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, released by the Kelmscott Press. The Arts and Crafts meant to revive the medieval art, inspiration in nature and manual labour.

During the nineteenth century visual message layout was entrusted alternately two professionals: the artist or the writer. The first was shaped as a artist and the moment as a craftsman, often both in the very same colleges of arts and crafts. For the printer as artwork was using decorations and picking fonts printed in his compositions. The artist watched typography as a kid and paying more attention to decorative and descriptive components.

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

First Vanguards

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

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

Given Poster for Matinée. Produced by Theo van Doesburg in January 1923. The free font organization, conveys the spirit of the Dada movement, irrationality, for liberty and oppose the status quo and visual expressions of this 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 style, as there is summarized the design profession through scientific methodology.

Current pictograms design for the National Park Service of the United States. The thought to simplify the symbols sorts developed through the 1950s.

The design of the early twentieth century, in addition to the arts of the same period, was a reaction against the decadence of typography and design of the late nineteenth century.

The fascination with ornamentation along with the proliferation of measurement changes and typographical design one piece design, interchangeable with good layout, it had been an idea that was preserved until the late nineteenth century. The Art Nouveau, with its clear appetite stylistic was a motion that contributed to high order visual makeup. While keeping a high degree of formal complexity, did so within a solid visual consistency, shedding the variation of typographic styles in one graphic piece.

Art movements of the next decade of the twentieth century and the political turmoil that followed them, generated dramatic changes in graphic design. The Dada, De Stijl, Suprematism, Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, the Bauhaus and also produced a new vision that influenced all branches of the visual arts and design. All these movements opposed to the cosmetic arts and popular, in addition to the Art Nouveau, which under the sway of this new interest in geometry evolved into the Art Deco. These movements were a revisionist and transgressive soul in most arts of the time. This period also books and manifestos proliferated by which artists and educators expressed their remarks.

Throughout the 1930s designed for the essay intriguing aspects of graphic design. The graphic style change was important because it shows a reaction against eclecticism ornamentalist organicism along with also 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 inevitable in the creation of twentieth century graphic design. One other important element regarding professional practice, was the increasing use of visual type as communication component. This product appeared mostly in the designs created by the Dada and De Stijl.

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