What is Graphic Design?

Many people have asked me to define Graphic Design. It’s tricky. The question is kind of like asking, “What is a doctor?” There are doctors who do routine work and there are innovators, which is a good way to think about it.

It’s about telling a story, creating an ambiance, and a personal statement which surpasses the spoken word. It is an avenue for amazingly clever and beautiful art, and it also encompasses the mundane and artless work, such as laying out a newspaper page full of want ads – bland, but still Graphic Design.

The best designers can convey so much of a story in such an artistic way that the client’s image and brand is instantly respected for its mark.

Graphic Design goes back to our earliest times. It was recently revealed that some of the delicately stylized cave art was created by Neanderthals. Prior to these recent studies, cave art was attributed to Homo Sapien men. Current studies not only show Neanderthals as artists, the sprayed hand paintings indicate that many of the artists were female. This is based on finger length ratios.

It was previously believed that cave art was about conveying hunting energies to glorify the hunt. That is because it was the simplest explanation, not realizing that early humanoids had artistic elegance, meaning, spirituality, and a quest for legacy. This is the essence of branding.

The image in this post shows that the artist captured death and tenderness, but not necessarily hunting. Everything is stylized; this is the origin of Graphic Design.

It impacts all of us.

Written by Blog Contributor: Luna Gilligan