The term ‘graphic design’ has its roots in the ‘commercial art’ and ‘graphic art’

of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed in the aftermath of World

War II. Designers began experimenting with visual language and embraced

the potential of technological developments and the fragmentation of power of

the printing trades. By the 1960s it was a recognisable discipline. Today

graphic design represents something much broader, complex and influential.

The term defined a new, creative intelligence that introduced a wider-ranging,

intellectual and artistic approach to what had been, essentially, a trade

occupation. It recognised an emergent discipline, with its own body of theory

that could adopt a social or political role in addition to that of the commercial.

A culture of inventive, visually innovative and often radical practice developed,

changing the nature of our visual environment.

 

What is graphic design today? ‘Graphic Design’ is an imprecise name for an illdefined subject, constantly shifting and changing, responding to social change and attitude, inextricably linked with cultural change. It is usually accepted to have something to do with media of all kinds, though not definitively; it may, but may not have a physical form.

 

Graphic design is the creative tension between the functional and the

aesthetic. As Quentin Newark suggests, graphic design has two roles

‘making sense’ and ‘creating difference’; it involves both communication and

expression.