Graphic Design is the arrangement of typography and images to communicate a message, feeling, opinion, thought, or idea. This can take any form, from photography to 3D design. Graphic design incorporates the use of: illustration, iconography, and branding, but is not limited to these devices.
Graphic design is practiced in numerous fields and media:
- Print – Magazines, newspapers, posters, periodicals, business collateral materials, print advertisements
- World wide web and software user interfaces
- Film, videos, CDs, DVDs – title design, motion graphics, promotional materials
- Identity systems, environmental graphic design including signage, wayfinding, and retail environments
- Products, packaging, point-of-purchase displays
The key is to first differentiate graphic design from graphic arts. Graphic design is all about the dynamic that exists between what is being created and the audience, whereas art hinges around the dynamic created between the creator and creation. Design is all about finding the solution to a problem. Graphic art is epitomized by a high-schooler with photoshop messing with effects.
Graphic design is epitomized by geniuses like Joe Duffy, Paul Rand, Stefan Sagmeister, etc.
Tools / Softwares for Design
The best Computer Graphic Design software to date is Photoshop. Photoshop is named the best software by many and out ranks its rival, Paint Shop Pro. Photoshop has all the best tools and with a bit of time and effort, you can produce great work. The industry standard is Adobe. There can be no arguments about that. Adobe provides us with very powerful tools. However, it does have a huge learning curve because of its power. As graphic designers, we use each of these programs and import and export between them for individual tasks.
- Photoshop for retouching or anything to be done in RGB raster work
- Illustrator and Corel Draw for illustration and anything in CMYK vector
- InDesign for page layouts, publishing etc
- InCopy just for copy writing
- Premiere Pro for video editing
- After Effects for video effects and motion graphics
- 3Ds Max and Maya for 3D modeling and animation
These programs overlap each other also. For instance, Illustrator could also be used for single page layouts, but InDesign is better for entire books. We can create illustrations in Illustrator, but we can also produce illustrations in Photoshop. It depends on the style you want the illustration to be in, since Photoshop is raster and Illustrator is vector.