Communicating through Graphic Design
Chapter 1: Graphic Design Today
The increasing use of computer technology by businesses in the 1960s, the introduction of the personal computer in the 1980s, and the birth of the World Wide Web in the 1990s have changed the way graphic designs are created and the way graphic design professionals work.
Today, anyone with a computer and the right software can make graphic designs, just as anyone with a digital movie camera can make movies. It takes training and hard work, however, to make a truly dynamic graphic design or memorable movie. Today's graphic designers work with powerful, complex software to take a design from an original idea to a finished product on paper; plastic, liquid crystal, or some other surface.
But no matter how complex their tools, designers today are still doing exactly what their counterparts in the fifteenth century did: they are combining words and images to communicate a clear and compelling message.
1-38: How would you describe the changes that have been made to this broadcasting company logo over sixty-six years? (First NBC logo, 1942; second 1954; and Chermayeff and Geismar design, 1985)
1-39: An insurance company placed this pop-up ad in Time magazine. When might a company want to make such a big impression on customers? (Oglivy & Mather, Transamerica pop-up advertisement, September 8, 1986)
1-40: Think of other ads you know that use words along with their logos. Which are most memorable? (Unmekh Shinde for Crayons Advertising, Nike ad, 2009)
1-41: Company logo of Apple Computer, 2001
1-42: Before this cover came out, holograms were not common. Why might the editors have wanted to use a new technique to show an ancient skull? (Holographic cover, National Geographic Magazine, November 1985)
READING LINKS:
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A Brief History