What Is Graphic Design?

When I first started the course, I was presented with a question, what is Graphic Design? In my eyes Graphic Design is the process of communicating visually to a target audience through a variety of methods, the purpose of which may be to inform, explain persuade etc. There are some basic principles to design which I will be looking at which include, line, colour, shape, proximity and layout. Graphic design has so many applications and many go unnoticed by the public. I will be looking at different examples of what Graphic design is in the following blog…

This piece is by Philippe Apeloig, he is a French designer and has had his work exhibited in a variety of places across the world. This in particular was a project for the French National Board of Education in 2001.
The words egalité, fraternité and liberté have been used repeatedly throughout in a variety of sizes and angles, which creates the idea of depth and makes the heart shape look 3D almost, especially with the colour scheme as the red recedes and the white advances. The words translate to equality, fraternity and liberty. The word fraternity almost seems ironic in between equality and liberty, as it refers to a male group, which is hardly showing equality. This was taken out of a book I have, Graphic Design Now.

This poster is probably one of my favourite campaigns, it uses an element used a lot in shock advertising; children. It is designed to shock which is a great way of advertising, but obviously there was a lot of controversy about the campaign, of course the image was digitally manipulated as it would be totally unethical to have recreated this. It is for the Banardo’s charity and there were a series of these posters which were designed to communicate what horrible lives could await young and disadvantaged children. However, there were too many complaints about the campaign and it was eventually banned.
The composition of the photo is clever, the baby is sat in a dark, dirty corner which makes it stand out even more, as the white skin and nappy are what we notice instantly, the next part that seems to catch our attention is the syringe pointing downwards and from here we see the shoe lace used as some sort of 'tie-off' which is pulled tight by the baby's mouth, this pulling motion almost looks quite violent, which suggests desperation. Next to the baby is a spoon, and probably some other paraphernalia but the image is quite grainy.
There was another advert that ran along side this, showing the baby as a typical, happy baby with the tagline, ‘the ad we wish we could have run’.
In my opinion, I think it was a ridiculous idea to ban the campaign, yes it is shocking and disturbing, but so is real life. I think that if a campaign has the power to attract complaints, maybe it is pwoerful enough to change opinions, maybe even lives. There are plenty more upsetting images that are photographed from real life, for example, Eddie Adams photograph of the 'Execution of a Vietcong Guerilla (1968), that truly is a shocking image.

This logo is really clever, yet mysterious, as those who view it will not realise what it means. The logo is for a campaign called Veincare, which demonstrates to heroin users how to inject safely to avoid illness and death which is caused by poor vein care.
The logo is very simple it features 2 colours and white, and very simplistic shapes to create an image. The orange ellipse shaped object represents a needle, and the red circle represents a vein. Due to the clean, clear shapes used in the logo it gives a clinical feel. I think the way it has been designed is really innovative and entirely appropriate for such a taboo issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs

This is a stop motion video created by an Art and Design student called Bang-yao. The video took 3 months planning, a further 4 days to shoot and 6,000 post-it notes. What I really like is the interaction between the person and the post-it’s; you can see a lot of careful planning has gone into this. I first saw it on the Channel 4 programme Rude Tube and it was in the top 10, the music featured is Royksopp’s, Epie. Bang-yao has written on his internet page, ‘Where my idea comes from is that every time when I am busy, I feel that I am not fighting with my works, I am fighting with those post-it notes and deadline.’


This image was made for a project by Studio Myerscough, a design studio in North London, set up in 1993 by Morag Myerscough. Although I can't find hardly any information on this image, I am pretty certain it is from the Rock Style exhibition in 2001. This image focusses on the use of vernacular typography, and through typography and the correct design decisions, the correct personality can be portrayed. For example, the style in which the words 'Be Cool' and 'Let's Rock' are quite appropriate, as the line style of letterforms aren't traditional shapes, with arms, stems and terminals that all join up, they are made up of a series of dots that take the shape of a traditional letter. From looking at the photo closer, these 'dots' appear to actually be holes that have been cut out of the material used as there is some form of shadowing aorund the edges, with a yellow material underneath.
The way the white light has been used with the bright, vibrant pinks, purples and blues creates energy.



This is from a leaflet I found for Endlseigh insurance, the target audience for this advert in particular is students, and to say insurance adverts can be quite dull, the way the 'Students?' heading has been created makes it a bit more eye-catching
as the letters feature elements of student life, and possessions for example, the 't' features part of an electric guitar which is mostly contained within the letter apart from the neck and part of the body, which extend past the boundaries of the letter. The 'u' is a television which makes the letter 3D.
The font used is a plain, bold sans serif font, which makes it easier to see the images used, it works as the font is simple so it isn't overcomplicated.



This 'Good Times, They're Out There' Budweiser advertising campaign is from August 2009 and is a heavy, large scale campaign, there were inserts put into free daily papers at the end of the week, and for the 9 weeks that the campaign ran it was estimated to reach 2 million people. The format I received my Budweiser advert was a magnet, that has lenticular effect to it, as the image does alter slightly when tilted.
Other formats of the campaign appeared in Time Out, FHM, GQ and other magazines. Budweisers target market for this is the 18-24 year olds, and due to the variety of formats this campaign will be expressed in, one person may see this campaign around 40 times over that 9 week period. The campaign was produced by Fallon London, an international advertising agency, who have also produced campaigns for BMW, Cadbury Schweppes, Rolling Stone, Asda and many, many more.
The image above is a landscape from a city in America, where exactly, is not known. I love seeing cities at night, with all the bright lights and fantastically tall sky scrapers so this really caught my eye. Especially with the text as red neon lights, they stand out, even the smallest word 'there' still stands out. I like how the text is placed at different depths to show that these 'good times' are somewhere out there, this would not have been the same if it had been written at one depth.


John Warwicker designed this cover for Underworld’s single ‘Cowgirl’; it is quite an experimental style which reflects the genre and style of the band. Although the design is quite chaotic, the key elements stand out, as the main design is black text on white background, but the Artist (Underworld) and Title (Cowgirl) are in white text on a black background. Underneath the title of the track appears to be some form of text, this is actually a line from the song, ‘Why don’t you call me’ written in reverse. I like the imperfection of the text, as if it has been stamped on, and in other areas the text overlaps.



Following on with my black and white theme is the next piece by David Carson; he is a designer I never tire of researching. The phrase “Don’t mistake legibility for communication” is quite a key phrase in the world of Graphics as it is a misconception that legibility and communication (readability) are the same. I am quite a fan of black and white, mainly because I like how the two simultaneously contrast. What I also like is the contrast in clean and gritty, as the typewriter style lettering is like that of a real typewriter where there can be gaps in the ink to give an imperfect yet edgy feel, for the top row of this it is black against white, and the very bottom row is white against black, and for the word legibility, it is a clever use of negative space which is very clean cut against the black messy background which is the same phrase repeated over and over printed in a completely different font. It is clever and innovative how the word legibility has been printed as the separate characters are separated with different kerning distances, to reinforce how legibility is the ability to distinguish characters.



This is also by David Carson, designed for Quiksilver, featuring famous surfer Danny Fuller. What grabs my attention with this poster is the colours used, as they are warm yet still manage to be vivid, for example, the blue used for the water, blue is normally associated as a cool, cold colour, but this bright blue has a warm feel to it, like the kind of blue you see in holiday brochures which makes it all the more appealing. Against the brown of the surfers skin, it seems to warm it up even more, and instantly makes me think of the sun and beach. The Quiksilver logo is in red so it stands out, and we know straight away who the client is, there is a part of the logo that has been repeated in the top right hand corner in black, which due to the rules of colour and proximity we notice at the same time as the name, Danny Fuller.


This was taken from the book, Kiss and Sell by Robert Sawyer, and is part of an advertising campaign for the Royal Bank of Scotland that focuses on talking less and doing more, which represents how the RBS operate, and how they will want their customers to operate.
I like how the repetition of the word Yada increases in size as if coming out of the page to represent talking. The fact that these streams of text are coming out of different parts of the building on the page shows many people ‘just talking’ which shows how a lot of society work, talking instead of doing, businessmen don’t talk business, they do business, Doctors don’t talk about saving lives, they save them, and the customers of RBS should act to make it happen (another smaller tagline from the advert).
The colour scheme is very minimal; blue black and white, but the blue and white are already the logo colours for the company, this makes the poster more identifiable through colour association.



This is the current logo for the Google Search Engine page, it is the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, his googly eyes have been placed between the two G's to represent the O's in Google, and the rest of the letters have some sort of chocolate chip cookie style fill. Sections of the letter are incomplete to show bits that have possibly been eaten, with a grey outline underneath to shows the continuity of line underneath. There are also crumbs and chunks of cookie, in front of the monster. The reason behind this, is for the 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street. Internet users from UK, Canada and France will see this when they log on to the Google homepage.
I think this re-make of the logo is fantastic, I think it is a good way to show the anniversary, and a great way to advertise Sesame Street (as Google is one of the most popular search engines on the web), I myself was unaware of the occasion. I saw the Cookie Monster and out of curiosity clicked on it which brought up search results for "Sesame Street".

This is taken from the Type and Typography book, I looked at this example in my Alphabet Soup: Visual Thinking brief, as it looked similar to how I wanted my final piece to look. It is quite clever, as the original type face was designed by a graphics student, and this version uses the sound waves from a character in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and uses the font to mimic the shape of the sound waves.