William Addison Dwiggins coined the term graphic design to describe his process
of designing books. The process was a combination of typesetting, illustration, and
design. The simple art changes to the form of interpretive art. Therefore even the
term was coined in 1922, it dates back to the ancient literature, craft, paintings of
ancient India. Graphic designing also dates back past Egyptian hieroglyphs to at
least 17,000-year-old cave paintings. Graphic design is a form of crafting where
professionals create visual content to communicate. By applying visual hierarchy
and layout techniques, designers use typography and pictures to meet users’
specific needs and focus on the logic of displaying elements in interactive designs,
to optimize the user experience.
Molding the User Experience Visually
Graphic design covers a range of activities including logo creation. Graphic design
has taken the sense that concerns aesthetic appeal and marketing. As the name
suggests Graphic designers attract viewers using images, color, and typography.
However, graphic designers working in user experience (UX) design must justify
stylistic choices regarding, say, image locations and font with a human-centered
approach. That means the focus is on seeking to empathize the most with—your
specific users while you create good-looking designs that maximize use case
scenario and have a broad spectrum. Aesthetics must serve a purpose—in UX
design and not be like modern art. Therefore, graphic designers must branch into
visual design. And thus the design should also be interactive and invoke thoughts.
For instance, if an otherwise pleasing mobile app can’t offer users what they need
in several thumb-clicks, its designer/s will have failed to provide graphic design
along with user experience. The scope of graphic design in UX covers the creation
of beautiful designs that users find highly pleasurable, quick witted, useful.
“Design is a solution to a problem. Art is a question to a problem.”
— John Maeda, President of Rhode Island School of Design
Emotional Design
Graphic design is all about emotional communication through color, and images;
serif fonts and dark, duller colors evoke seriousness, while san-serif fonts and
bright colors tend to bring out a sense of joy or excitement. Bright colors indicate
passion, joy and life. Graphic designers are hence very often emotional designers
who elicit specific reactions in a user. Design is also concerned with shaping the
thought process and emotions of the user, although it tends to take a broader, big
picture view of the entire user’s experience with the product. On top of focusing on
the right typography and colors, UX designers are also concerned with motion
design, the tone of the content, and information architecture, among others.
Creative thinking
Graphic designers and UX designers are both equally skilled at creative thinking.
For graphic designers, creating visuals that adhere to conventions (and thus
communicate effectively) while retaining a sense of originality (to stand out among
the competition) requires some serious creative and critical thinking. In the same
way, UX designers have to create products that solve users’ problems—and
sometimes, conventional solutions aren’t always the best or most appropriate ones.
It may sound easy but it is really difficult to have a creative idea for every thing all
the time. It gets even tougher if one is a beginner. guaranteed — you must nurture
it and foster it, but you will still have days where your ideas are just not flowing.
Therefore, just sketch, prototype, build, draw, mold, shape, explore etc. The
process of making will also lead to other innovative ideas and creativity that would not be executed otherwise. So go ahead and just generate. It requires one to break a
pattern and can be quite uncomfortable at times.
Prototyping
Graphic designers often create mockups and wireframes of their designs prior to
delivering a finished design. It gives a chance for clients to offer feedback on their
designs and for them to improve them without having to start from scratch. UX
designers create mockups and prototypes too, but these tend to be less focused on
the “look” of the product and more on the “feel” of it. Is the prototype useful? Is it
usable? Is it desirable? These are the questions a UX designer wants answers to.
User vs pixel
Graphic designers tend to pursue pixel perfection in their designs. Ensuring that
texts have perfect kerning and colors conform to brand guidelines often takes up a
significant portion of graphic designers’ jobs—and for good reason, too. UX
designers, however, are primarily focused on users. They study the interface
between users and the product, finding ways to ensure that the product answers to
the user’s key needs. And they do so by conducting a lot of research—by talking to
and observing users, creating user personas and stories, doing usability testing on
the products, and many more. Graphic designers looking to switch career tracks will need to do a substantial amount of work finding out how to conduct user
research (more about this a bit later on in the article).
Why every business needs Graphic Designing?
CUSTOMIZED LOGO
A customized logo establishes a sense of credibility, creates brand recognition, and
firmly positions your company within the marketplace. There are many factors to
building an impactful logo and visual identity, a major influence on your logo’s
success is its color palette. Your brand’s choice of color scheme is one of the most
crucial in determining how the public may interpret your business. If you’ve heard
of color theory, you may know that certain color combinations create distinct
perceptions and elicit emotions. Examining the market trends in your industry and
understanding what colors your customers respond to, may make all the difference.
ADVERTISING
Considering the psychological effects that your branding has on prospects, your
advertisements need to follow a similar set of guidelines. Among a sea of expertly
crafted ads, a poorly designed advert will easily become overlooked as noise. The
chances that your ad will convert prospects without a hero image, strong graphic
elements, and a clear call to action is slim. In advertising, or in any form of print or
digital communications, your brand’s essence speaks louder than words.
SALES
Clean use of typography, appropriate imagery, and content formatting is only the
foundation of the many factors your graphic designer will consider while
developing your new brochure or catalog. Printing massive amounts of text and
sourcing stock photos ‘as-is’ may dilute your brand and messaging. This can easily
turn off prospects. Combining innovative folding techniques, binding options,
paper textures, finishes, and weights can really make your sales collateral stand
out.
SOCIAL MEDIA
By using graphic design, you are able to establish a consistent brand footprint
across all social media platforms. Create an account on platforms where you feel
your customers use most often. Try Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, Google Plus,
and Twitter, just to name a few. Using custom-branded graphics in your posts will
tie your digital branding to your physical marketing collateral, leading to cohesive
brand identity. Branding your own graphics lets your audience become more
interested in your business and curious to see what else will be posted in the future
and therefore be more inclined to follow you on social media. Being in the age of ‘custom everything’ exemplifies the fact that people love interacting with the most
unique and uncommon. Without proper branding, your page may fall prey to
reposts by competing organizations that can cause potential threats to the
authenticity and integrity of your brands’ voice. Take the initiative and invest in
developing your own custom images and branded posts to spread your company’s
presence across the internet. Find out the impact that digital marketing makes on
your business by reading The Power of Digital Marketing.
IT IS PRESENTABLE
In order to keep an audience engaged throughout a new presentation or pitch, you
will need strategically structured and designed slides. This will be your secret
weapon to winning the crowd over if paired with a smooth verbal delivery. Telling
your story with enticing graphics that support your product or services’ benefits
will help the sell. Be sure that the flow of the presentation is clear and concise with
hard start/stops to denote a new topic or chapter.
PACKAGING DESIGN
Since most consumers shop with their eyes, a product sitting on a store display or
shelf can only be considered as good as the label or packaging that encases it. The
appeal of that label or package is made possible solely through the expertise of a
team of graphic designers. Any product in a company plans on launching should be
uniquely designed with your target audience’s aesthetic, taste, wants, and needs in
mind so you could quickly grab their attention. It’s important to leave a lasting
impression through your packaging, and it should be developed by experts that
understand branding and visual hierarchy. In order for business to compete for
on-shelf, it needs to memorably convince consumers that they are missing out if
they leave the store without your product.
