DESIGNIS GRAPHIKUM
One of the publications made available to the general public by Ecole intuit.lab is a small booklet/introductory guide which illustrates the various roles of the Graphic Design professions: To identify, illustrate, signal... in the form of words and visual examples.
Introduction
Design and designers...
"In our everyday lives, we are constantly coming into contact with lots of little things which we hardly notice but which all, nevertheless, conceal everything that design is really about: sticking a stamp on an envelope, looking at poster in the subway, strolling down a shopping street with all the brand-name signs, paying with a banknote or credit card, reading a magazine, opening a packet of biscuits, etc.
This seemingly endless list is enough to demonstrate just how broad the palette of graphic design really is.
It follows that, if design is an integral part of our daily environment, then the designer has a responsibility to society. It is well known that the designer's task is to make it easier to use, read, promote and understand the messages with which he is entrusted; but do we also understand that the designer also has an obligation to fulfil this assignment by looking for aesthetic solutions that are in harmony with the tastes of his contemporaries?
Once aware of all these obligations, we can paint a portrait of the perfect designer! A creative personality, highly sensitive at all times, with a understanding for psychology, curiosity in the world around him, knowledge of the latest techniques and rules governing his environment, right through to the constraints involved in printing on metal, paper, plastic, glass and more.
Choosing design as a profession means committing oneself to living a life of being open-minded to the world, and thus a rich and creative life. Is it not also true to say being a designer consists of imbuing everything you touch with meaning? To do this, just like the craftsman of yesteryear, the designer has to cultivate, discover and be constantly on the look out for something new.
The designer, of course, does not escape from economic responsibilities. To communicate, promote, animate, secure investments, energies and jobs. Launching a new product, a new magazine or a new logo can have serious consequences. A design professional will know that each of his creations is destined to be criticized, judged and tested from the outset.
This approach is very different to that of an artist, who can express his vision of the world with no other limits than those of his own personal ideas.
Design, in contrast, constantly requires the designer to meet objectives for success!
Gérard Caron,
Founder of the design agency Carré Noir, Director/Consultant, Creator and Animator for the website www.admirabledesign.com
Graphic design
Graphic design is an applied art. It is the process of conveying a visual, fixed or animated message to a given target audience.
The content of this message may be of a cultural, commercial, political or social nature.
It generally consists of texts and illustrations which are arranged and laid out on the page according to rules of legibility, graphic codes and cultural considerations.
The graphic designer is responsible for giving meaning to a message and to convey it using the forms and codes of visual language. He has to look, listen, analyze and understand the points-of-view of those he is working for.
By using his imagination as a tool, he will devote himself to conveying a message by organizing it. He will call upon a particular concept, a language, a method, a creative and passionate mind, a sense of taste and different levels of involvement. The graphic designer is a professional.
Our society is a society of images. The world in which we live is punctuated by images at every turn. Graphics is without a doubt a universal language, the most universal of the arts. Though easily identifiable, it generally receives little recognition from the general public who do not have a proper understanding of how it works or of those who create it.
However, without the graphic arts, there would be no newspapers, no written texts, no mail and no stamps, no internet, no books as we know them and no banknotes.
Words would have to be handwritten and most information would be transmitted by the spoken word. The art of graphics was conceived to fulfil a number of very specific functions.
The first function is to communicate.
Communicate in order to inform, federate, inscribe, signal, orientate, indicate, illustrate, package, identify, promote and animate.
To inform
v.t. (lat. informare, provide a form).1/ To inform someone about something. Provide information: To make knowledgeable (about) or familiar (with) 2/ To make aware of, warn about. Make it easier to read a magazine, identify a title, a period of time, an editorial style.
One of the main components of a graphic message is the typeface.
Without characters, each letter would have to be written out by hand. The drawings that constitute our characters allow us to put typeset words and print texts, of different sizes (capitals, lower case), in different weights and styles (italic, bold) and, of course, in different alphabets (Cyrillic, Latin, Greek and Arabic through to concrete poetry such as Apollinaire's calligrammes, and so on).
The letter is used to inform a statement, identify a period of time, a culture, an atmosphere. How it is used depends on the medium, the nature of the message, its intended target and the language used. Either fixed or animated, letters are present everywhere in our everyday life, whether out there on the street or in the visual identities of public institutions or companies.
To federate
To form a federation. 1/ To unify several states, which, whilst each retaining a certain degree of autonomy, recognize the authority of a single power in certain sectors and form a single State for the purposes of representation to foreign powers. 2/ Professional, corporate or sporting association.
Use common codes to unify a target audience with regard to a message.
By using a series of signs, visual codes and symbols that are easily identifiable for the chosen target, the graphic designer will be able to unify a group, people or a community with regard to a message or sign.
Flags, money, seals and emblems are all symbols, forms of cultural representation created by graphic designers to enable a target audience to recognize a shared, familiar message and thus communicate with the issuer of the message or by extension, with other members of the target group to which they belong.
To inscribe
v.t. (lat. inscribere). 1/ To inscribe something, to enter in a register, booklet, etc. To engrave in rock, metal, etc., in a permanent manner.
Identify a place, an activity, convey the atmosphere of a place using the graphics of an insignia. These are all functions of the art of graphics.
The graphic designer uses a combination of signs, letters, figures, illustrations or even pictograms to design the identity of a store, shop or public place and visually express its activity. The graphic designer renders these things identifiable. Many brand insignia today have become icons.
To signal
1/ To provide a system of signalling or signage: the installation, layout of signs or signals on a channel of communication, on roads, etc.
There are various types of signs on a road: danger warning signs, restrictive signs, mandatory signs, etc. 2/ Use of various signals to give a specific instruction.
Indicate by a sign, warn of a danger, make aware of a danger by signalling its existence thus allowing it to be avoided.
Every day, we take to the road, hop on the train or go up some stairs by following the signs, pictograms and signage all around us. We make our way through airports, cities or buildings by following a system of visual signs which in most cases have to be understandable to everyone, regardless of their educational background, language, age or culture. The graphic designer
To orientate
v.t. (derived from orient). 1/ To orientate something or someone:
To position something/someone or to help determine the position of something/someone relative to the points of the compass, a given direction or any other indicator of direction.
Indicate a direction to be taken in relation to a given point, give someone directions, guide them.
A combination of signs, letters, illustrations and pictograms allows us to represent a given location. The role of a graphic designer often consists of organizing all these elements, to render them comprehensible and arrange them so that they are easily legible. These codes of representation and ways of reading are generally common to us all: symbols, a scale, an illustration, a typographic character. City centre plans, route-planning maps, public transport plans are all created by graphic designers.
To indicate
v.t. (Lat. indicare). 1/ To indicate someone or something, to designate them, to render them visible in a specific manner, by way of a gesture, signal, etc.
Make aware, point out a characteristic, explain how something is used.
Pictograms without a doubt constitute the most universal language there is.
Without them, our life would be far more complicated and it would be much less easy to communicate with those around us.
Indicative signs are to be found at every turn: telling you to wash your clothes at a certain temperature, to choose which toilet to go into depending on your gender, to warn you of a danger, to identify a flammable substance, an emergency exit, etc. All these graphic indications are essential to the way we live our lives in an increasingly international society.
To illustrate
(v.t. Lat. illustrare, to clarify, make light). 1/ To be an example for a country, a family, a name, etc., to be illustrious. 2 / To illustrate something, elucidate something in a captivating and clear way, providing accompanying examples. 3/ To illustrate a text, book, etc., to decorate with engravings, drawings, maps, images, etc.
Elucidate something in a captivating and clear way.
Graphic designers use signs, codes, letters and visuals to convey a message. Graphic designers often use images, be they photographs or illustrations, to concisely sum up or illustrate a statement. The style of illustration will set the tone for the message. Graphic designers often work with a specific illustrator or photographer to achieve the desired tone or style for the message and its intended target.
Illustrations are used for a wide range of purposes including advertising campaigns, brochures, children's' books and press articles.
To package
v.t. (derived from pack). 1/ To pack an object, to put it in a box, carton, wrap it with paper or in material, etc., to be sold, transported, stored, etc.
The same product will be perceived differently depending on the packaging in which it is presented.
Think about how we identify a product in the supermarket. Packaging is a discipline in its own right within graphic design.
Once brands have asked designers to come up with their visual identity, they are soon back again asking them to design the packaging for their products. The aim is to create a specific outer shell, in a form which meets specific standards (economic or safety standards, etc.), is suitable for a specific use and of course makes the product easy to identify at first glance. The visual codes used also make it possible to differentiate between products which are often very similar to each other.
To identify
v.t. 1/ To identify something/someone with something/someone, consider something/someone as identical to something/someone, or so similar as to be easily confused. 2/ To identify someone or something, such as a vehicle, to establish its identity. 3/ To identify something, to recognize its true nature, be able to specify the group, species, type, etc. to which it belongs.
Define an issuer, a target group and devise a message.
Often wrongly thought of simply as someone who does page layout and who has merely a productive role, the graphic designer often has to try and see his customer's order from a broader perspective to be able to identify the requirement and devise a message to differentiate it from the numerous other visual cues with which we are presented on a daily basis. The nature of the message will determine the medium to be used for the customer's communications.
The primary role of the graphic designer is to make it possible to identify the issuer of the message, whether it be a company, an institution, a product or a person.
To promote
v.t. (Lat. promovere, to push onwards). 1/ To promote something, to propose the use, creation, development or circulation of something. 2/ To promote someone, to raise to a higher rank or position.
Encourage adoption of a product, brand or place, by giving it a "special" status of its own.
Whilst the aim of the majority of signs used by graphic designers is to identify a message, promotion uses codes which are specific to the world of marketing. More than any other type of message, the promotional message is intended to reach the largest possible target audience and therefore uses codes that are easily identifiable by that group. Promotional graphics used in sales brochures, coupons, catalogues and other tools issued by corporate marketing departments employ easily-identifiable colour codes, typefaces and formats. Every day, every one of us comes into contact with hundreds of promotional messages, whether on the street or on our screens.
To animate
v.t. (Lat. animare) 1/ To animate something, give it life, impart motion to something, enliven. 2/ To become animated: to come to life, to take on a new shine, to become more vivid.
Impart with life, motion or vivacity.
Since the advent of cinema, television and the Internet, as well as multimedia, more broadly speaking, graphic designers have been working on media to be displayed on screen. At the start of the century, they designed animated drawings, with each image they produced related to the previous one, so as to make their creation come to life. Today, static messages are rarely seen on television. As these media continue to develop, the graphic designer's job is to do the necessary to make it possible to identify one channel and distinguish it from another, to introduce an advertising break, to animate the weather map, to work on the credits for a film, to come up with ideas for a video clip or to create an animation for a website.
Skills for the future
"To inform, federate, signal, identify, illustrate, promote, package, ... A profession with a wealth of skills!
And a profession for the future. Above all, this is true because there will always be products or services which will need graphic designers to assert their presence: 250 new perfumes every year, hundreds of new items of packaging in supermarkets, several million titles on our press stands, more than 60,000 brands created in France every year and, taking into account the trademarks registered in the EU and abroad, this figure rises to 140,000 brands in total.
Even cities, regions and countries, finding themselves in competition with each other, now have to manage their image.
But it is also true, because new technologies are constantly generating new media and new needs. The Internet has already done this.
And things aren't going to stop there. Cars, household goods and a multitude of other devices will soon be equipped with screens and will start to communicate:
until now, the graphic designer has worked just on the surface of products. Now, his job is evolving towards enabling them to dialogue with users via this screen which he must render comprehensible. The future also holds the promise of much-vaunted "intelligent spaces": these are rooms, stores or meeting rooms where the occupants can modify the atmosphere and decor of their space in real time.
We are set to live in an increasingly visual world, where we will be inundated with images, signs, drawings, etc. The role of the graphic designer is to help us find our bearings in this visual maelstrom, to continue to awaken our desires, to inform us, to help us get around, make choices and make our purchases.
The graphic designer is there to set the scene for and sequence the images of our everyday life.
Jean-Charles Gaté,
Director-Founder Design
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