What is Graphic Design?(cont.)
Alright I know it's been a while, but I'm back again! And just like I said, one step at a time...one day at a time. Now that I gave you my own meaning of what the word means, which was a visual-virtual method of getting someone's ideas across. Just to give some of you people some insight on that, I figured it would be about as good of a time as ever to show you 3(actually 4 and I will explain that later) different kinds of graphic design work. Now, the first one right here on the left, is something that a lot of people are familiar with when it comes to graphic design and that is, a business card...plain, simple, but hey the logo looks cool, sleek, and shines pretty nicely. For a lot of people, they all want a cool looking business card that can represent them or their company or both. If you ever want a cool looking business card, just get a graphic designer (aka ME) to do this for you.
Now in this picture, it looks like a row of magazines/ newsletters, but the main focus of this image is that orange car magazine in the bottom right corner. Honestly, I like car magazines but that's besides the point. The point is, as a graphic designer or a person that can do graphic design work, we actually have to create all the design work for the front, spine( that small, narrow side of a book or magazine with the title and author/publisher on it), and back cover with all the pages in between. There are billions of these things and even though a person that buys one can read one in a day or two, it can take weeks to prepare one( I'll discuss that process later in a different topic). So yeah whenever you pick up or download a magazine, just think of us (the designers) whenever you look at it.
Now what you see before you is some raisins and nuts. Ironically, for those of you who know me, I love food and talk about it all the time, but this time I'm talking about what's around the food and with that said, I mean the bag, can, the packaging, etc. Guess who came up with the logo design for emerald glazed pecan pie flavored pecans with the cool green background or the one of the girl with the red hat(the sun maid) with the raisins at the bottom of the jar? Yep we do that too! Every time you go to a grocery store to pick up a can of green beans or tuna fish..somebody had to actually design the label that goes on everything in those stores. Shoot even if you go to a farmers market they even got signs written in sharpie saying something like "fruit 0.25 each" or something like that and that my friends...is still design.
Like I said, there is actually 4 different kinds of design work and they are all found in each of the 3 images. The one thing that separates a business card from another business card, a car magazine from another, etc...is the logo itself. Logos represent everything about a company and just think if that business card at the top was blank, then there would definitely be a lack of interest because a lot of people love things that are unique or custom. Now check this out, if people start to like a product under a company, and the demand increases so high that people all over the world want it, then that company has to have some kind of way to be recognized or identified from the rest of the companies, so that the people will know what the product is. That is why logos are the key and this is why we have name brands, like McDonald's, Nike, Apple, Windows, and so on. To me, the 4th one is actually the most important one. Sure it may look small on a package, but it means everything if you are trying to start a business or if you are a graphic designer, like myself.
Basically, the things I showed you (business card, magazines, newsletters, food packaging) , we create the designs for them. As far as the words and images that go on them, that will more then likely come from the people/businesses we work with but as far as the overall design, logo and layout(I'll go into detail later on) we do that part.
