William Addison Dwiggins coined the term [graphic design] in 1922 to describe himself and to express the broader, artistic aspects of a field, which at the time was primarily centered on advertising. I am hard-pressed to conjure a definition (since there are many) reflecting the field’s continually changing landscape, one that is enriched by a diverse cadre of practitioners who function in a variety of circumstances and capacities.
Graphic design is visual communication, a public service, a cultural practice; it is ‘problem solving’, functional and objective, though these are not the only qualities it could have. A practical definition might be: graphic design is the business of generating forms that a commissioner, viewer, or public can decode. (I prefer commissioner to ‘client’ because it suggests that a graphic designer is sought rather than ‘hired’ and that there is some understanding of the value in doing so – there is a partnership.)
A graphic designer works with, and for, other people. She or he thoroughly understands the parameters of a project: content (text and imagery), budgets (for printing and other fees associated with a project), and deadlines. An holistic definition might be: graphic design is an interdisciplinary profession informed by history, articulated by a distinct process that involves research, sketching, and writing, and is cultivated by criticism.
The latter is fueled by knowledge secured from other disciplines: science, social sciences, communications, literature, theory, religion, politics, etc. There are numerous specializations: web/interactive design, editorial design, packaging, environmental graphics, motion graphics, corporate identity, book design, information graphics, and typeface design.
Graphic design concerns the production of messages articulated through a multitude of formats. These messages must be practicable; a graphic designer is responsible for making work that resonates, it will serve someone’s needs and be of value as intellectual and cultural documents.
There is a bulk and body to design, which burdens our streets, our homes, and our public spaces. Design is not unbridled self expression but rather a commitment to a task for which one must have something to say – a concept, though this is loosely interpreted and a somewhat exhausted term. It is a grammar tuned to suit the people and contexts for which it is intended, or else it is art. Art, like graphic design, has a social function but it is not the same, although both revel in visuality. The former is personal, reflexive, and often exists at the fringes of commerce. These distinctions must be understood. Nonchalance or ambivalence leads to works that are equivocal, unless one is clear about the field’s jurisdiction.
Graphic design is a visual language supported by verbal and written discourse. Language upon language: connotation and denotation, the enhancement of which amplifies or degrades resonance. It may be suggestive and it may be literal. It exists to persuade and move a public by way of icons, indexes, symbols, and meta symbols. Graphic design is a form of persuasion and it appropriates linguistic strategies: simile, metonymy, personification, metaphor, puns, irony, parody, etc. It is a complex of negotiation and compromise. Negotiations that take place before and during the development of a project necessitate tact, an ability to express oneself in ways that draw a commissioner towards a specific interpretation.
Graphic design is a narrative whose unfolding is contingent upon a commissioner’s support and a practitioner’s determination to provide the most assured and workable visualizations. It is willingness to take risks, to make mistakes, and to relinquish hard-won ideas at the last minute for ones that are more responsive, more illuminating. Graphic design is a profession: we profess to know how our work functions in the world, we profess to make things of value to those in need of it, we profess to know our place and our forbears to make a unique contribution.
An understanding of the depth and breadth of graphic design is not easy to convey. There is an endemic propensity for skimming: snatching a look, mood, or ‘feel’’ for its own sake. It is easy to miss the disciplinary aspect of graphic design because, like everything else, it has been commodified. Philip Megs wrote that ‘clients and their marketing experts who fail to recognize graphic resonance … and … believe that shouting down their competition with hard-sell slogans, phosphorescent inks, and strident typography are out of touch with the increased level of visual awareness in contemporary culture.’ 1
Our society is indeed visually aware, but at the expense of literacy, not just of reading or of writing, but of a yearning to discover what lies beneath and shapes the visual communications we encounter daily. Graphic design is patient, self – and professional – discovery. To obtain a graphic voice, ‘my own style’, as students are inclined to say, takes more than a modicum of courage. Tenacity, craftsmanship, humility, self-restraint, and the ability to listen are among the qualities anyone wishing to enter the field should possess. This trumps the careerist tendency to just get on and make a living of it. Despite the field’s reported over saturation, there remain numerous opportunities to exercise graphic design.
Literacy is imperative. A gauge of professional fit is the willingness to explore linguistic terrain. Typography is a graphic designer’s currency. It is a carrier and promulgator of information, linguistic sign and form. Essential to graphic resonance is typographic virtuosity, which is complemented by a host of factors that range from a graphic designer’s use of color, scale, contrast, texture, and other variables. Though the history of graphic design runs parallel to the history of typography, it is delineated by the manner in which letterforms have been implemented. To make graphically resonant work is to know and recognize letters, to be aware of what their forms suggest. To assume the role of typographic connoisseur is to don the humanist’s garb, to take up a literate position in a sea of style and fleeting gesture.
Dwiggins is an exemplar of the Modern graphic designer. Working from Massachusetts, his diverse interests cut a swath through artistic terrain: he was a type designer and calligrapher, book designer, illustrator, and advertising man, marionette maker, a painter of murals, and a set and interior designer. His output of book covers and title pages for Alfred A. Knopf, Harper & Brothers, and Random House demonstrate typographic and illustrative equanimity. Dwiggins was the embodiment of a multidisciplinary bent rarely seen today, a man of words (writing his seminal Layout in Advertising in 1928) and letters (as seen in the typefaces Electra and Caledonia and a sans serif display face dubbed Metro, all of which he designed for Linotype between the late 20s and 30s); a man who made images, objects, and art; a man who worked in the commercial realm but was not subsumed by it. Dwiggins was motivated by sincere eclecticism rather than abstract theories or dogma. Neither a classicist who lamented ‘the good old days’ nor a technophile, he instead aspired to design in a manner that suited his time.
Graphic design is ephemeral, which is why matters of literacy and of responsibility to the discipline seem onerous. Graphic designers are nomadic creatures, moving from one project to the next, reassured that the constant demand for novelty and alluring imagery; of multifarious contents in search of a dress, will sustain practice. It probably will, though I am more interested to know who or what will shape the future of graphic design in decades to come. Who will shepherd the field and what circumstances will motivate a transformation? European Modernism was a consolidation of arts pervaded by theory and idealism; American Modern was its down-to-earth catholic counterpart. Absent from today’s practice is an underlying sense of self, a sense of purpose beyond a commission. Graphic designers work with and for people, but can they speak for themselves?
The education of a graphic designer consists of a regimen of projects perceived to be standard in the profession. As such, it is often reactive and not anticipatory. Yet the demands of rigorous studios suggest the need for a comprehensive and scholarly approach. Barriers that isolate branches of knowledge must be jettisoned in order for the profession to fulfill its designation: that it is interdisciplinary, worthy of serious study, and of lasting value to a commissioner as well as its milieu.
This is not a new argument, but one that will likely remain poignant. The specialism that segregates fine arts and graphic design from their coequals in the humanities, social sciences, business, and technology is only too rampant. Alvin Lustig epitomized the graphic designer/humanist: “The designers is not a single-minded specialist, but an integrator of all the art forms – and simultaneously a spokesman for social progress.” 2 I expand Lustig’s definition of art to include pursuits that demand creativity, skill, and vision. Graphic design is one such pursuit.
Graphic design is big.
Note: This essay was originally published in Open Manifesto 3.
References
- Meggs, Philip. Type & Image: The Language of Graphic Design. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1992. (p. 129)
- Drew, Ned and Paul Sternberger. By Its Cover: Modern American Book Cover Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005. (p. 53).