What is Graphic Design? What does it mean to you?
Graphic design is appropriate, creative, obsessive, frustrating, organised, structured, ongoing...
Although all Graphic Design is different, there are a basic set of questions that most successful designers ask themselves when creating work:
- hand drawn and / or digital?
- think about the language / dialogue
- personal opinions of the designer
- information and how you communicate it
- think about the scale / space / format
- think about your media, it doesn't just have to be print based
- what can be created successfully in the time frame?
- think about colour
- think about structure / organisation
- image and /or type? image as type /type as image?
- Function
- Design Context
- Scale
- Tone of Voice
- Message
Then, in groups, we wrote down lists of what main traits of designs we considered to fall under these categories, IE;
Function: what is it doing? why does it exist?
to inform, decorate, instruct, promote, educate, warn, advertise, explain, entertain, inspire, express, present
Context: who is the target audience? what is it?
- branding, publishing, campaigning, advertising...
- time or era
- audience
- class
- gender
- style
Tone of Voice: how does it suit the target audience?
informal, playful, chatty, comical, powerful, inspirational, proud, simplistic, witty, serious, satirical, angry
Message/Ideas/Concept: what is it trying to say?
awareness, decorative, political
Intended Scale: what is its intended size? is it effectively applied?
billboard, poster, side of building, Ad shell, side of bus, magazine, TV, web
Using this list, here are some examples of design that fall under each category:
FUNCTION
Function = To Inform
Function = To Decorate
Function = To Promote
Function = To Advertise
CONTEXT
Context = Time/Era
Context = Gender
Content = Class
TONE OF VOICE
Tone of voice = Playful/silly
Tone of voice = formal/serious
Tone of voice = friendly
CONCEPT
Concept = relates to company cleverly
Concept = witty/silly
Concept = working with negative space
INTENDED SCALE
Scale = large scale format - intended to work on interior spaces of buildings
Scale - small scale format, intended for smaller use in packaging
Scale = very large, intended to be seen from far away and to catch your eye
