The designer is engaged in the design of graphic products, but the layouts should not only be beautiful, but also understandable. When looking at a book, magazine or website, it is important for the reader to understand what information is key and what is secondary. The same with applications, packaging and instructions. And the design also helps to navigate in transport and urban space.
The mission of a graphic designer is to streamline the chaos around, making the world structured and understandable. The designer has to work with all communication media.
Goals and objectives of graphic design
Modern graphic design is needed to sell products, establish relationships with customers and create a comfortable environment. We see it everywhere – at stops, road signs, signs, in books, in presentations, instructions and social networks.
Graphic design has several tasks:
- emphasize differences: graphic design helps to emphasize the features of each object, to distinguish it from the rest. Recognition is achieved through color identification, corporate graphics, typography and layout. This helps to differentiate the product from competitors.
- provide information: many graphic design products (signs, signs, labels) have practical applications. At the same time, care for the person should be in the first place. Take, for example, the instructions for a coffee machine. If it has no pictures and a poorly readable font, then it will be difficult for the buyer to figure it out, and you can do something wrong and damage the equipment or even harm your health.
UI design
User interface design is the work on the graphical part of the interfaces of applications, sites and services. It requires a detailed study of all elements – buttons, icons, forms.
The activity of a graphic user interface designer is related to UI design, so a professional should understand screen adaptability and have basic knowledge of web development.
Typography
This type of graphic design involves working with books, newspapers, magazines, and other printed or digital items that include a large amount of text.
In this case, the designer works primarily with layouts. He must create materials that will retain a beautiful look after printing. Therefore, it is important for a specialist to understand what processes an image will go through before it is made. Here it is necessary to correctly manage color, be able to work in raster and vector editors and comply with technical requirements.
Illustrations in graphic design
Initially, graphics and illustration are two different areas. But there are specialists who possess both those and other skills. They create unique works that help the business stand out from the competition.
The main examples where illustrations are used are:
- covers of books, albums, catalogs;
- infographics and presentations;
- web design and applications.
Internet promotion
To engage and inform their consumers, brands hire a graphic designer to create colorful post images, landing pages, or ad layouts.
On the one hand, this simplified the work of designers. Now you do not need to deal with prepress and know all the technical details of printing, manufacturing and production. On the other hand, the user is attracted not just by a picture with fonts, but by a beautiful concept, which requires knowledge, for example, of motion design.
Infographics, presentations and instructions
Information that is difficult to perceive is easier to convey not in text, but in the form of a diagram. It can reflect the relationships between the objects under consideration, show graphs, and provide additional information.
Instructions are often in the form of infographics, since it is easier to draw, for example, a gadget and the location of the buttons on it, than to describe everything in text. In some cases, the creators of instructions can do without text at all.
Presentations tend to be concise. They should be read from a great distance, if the conference is held in the hall, be informative, but not distract from the speaker’s speech. And all this should be not only understandable, but also beautiful.
Books, magazines and web pages
Design is more than just graphics and images. Even books, the design of which at first glance may seem “simple” and “nondescript”, are the result of a lot of work done by the designer on the layout. Properly selected fonts, image captions, line spacing and margins make reading comfortable and make your eyes less tired.
The designer chooses the fonts, the arrangement of page numbers and headings, the size of margins and indents. Usually books have a restrained design, but in magazines they use a much more creative approach: brightly highlighted titles, cuts, collages and compositions from illustrations. However, even in creative solutions, the text should still be legible, headings should look like headings, and navigating through the magazine should be convenient.