Suppose you want to announce or sell something. You have a message you want to communicate. How do you send it? You could tell people one by one or broadcast by radio or loudspeaker. That’s verbal communication. But, if you use a visual medium—if you make a poster, type a letter; create a business logo, a magazine ad, an album cover—you are using a form of visual communication called graphic design.

Graphic designers work with drawn, painted, photographed, or computer-generated images.  They also design the letter-forms that make up various typefaces found in movie credits and TV ads; in books, magazines, menus, and even on computer screens. Designers create, choose, and organize these elements to communicate a message. Graphic design is a part of your daily life. From small things like gum wrappers to huge things like billboards to the T-shirt you’re wearing.  Graphic design informs, persuades, organizes, stimulates, identifies, and attracts attention.

Graphic design is a creative process that combines art and technology to communicate ideas. The designer works with a variety of communication tools in order to convey a message from a client to a specific audience. The main tools are images and type.

Image-based Design
Designers develop images to represent the ideas their clients want to communicate. Images can be incredibly powerful and compelling tools of communication, conveying not only information but also moods and emotions. People respond to images based on their personalities, associations, and previous experience.

In the case of image-based design, the images must carry the entire message - there are few, if any, words to help.  The images may be photographic, painted, drawn, or graphically rendered in many different ways. Image-based design is employed when the designer determines that a picture is really worth a thousand words. (For example, you know that a chili pepper is hot and this knowledge in combination with the image creates visual communication.)

Type-based Design
At times, designers rely on words to convey a message.  But, they use words differently from the way writers do. To designers, what the words look like is as important as their meaning. The visual forms, whether typography or handmade lettering, perform many communication functions. They can gain your attention on a poster, identify the product name on a package or a truck, or present text the way type in a book does. Designers are experts at presenting information in a visual form in print, on film, packaging, signs, or websites.

When you look at a printed page of text, think about what is involved in designing such a seemingly simple page. What would you do if you were asked to redesign the page? Would you change the typeface or type size?  Would you divide the text into columns?  What about the margins and the spacing between the paragraphs and lines?  Would you indent the paragraphs or begin them with decorative lettering?  What other treatments might you give the page number?  Would you change the boldface items, perhaps using italic or underlining?  What other changes might you consider and how would they affect the way the reader reacts to the content?  Designers evaluate the message and the audience for type-based design in order to make these kinds of decisions. 

Image and Type
Designers often combine images and type to communicate a client’s message to an audience. They explore the creative possibilities presented by words and images. It is up to the designer to find or create appropriate letterforms and images and establish the best balance between them.

Designers are the link between the client and the audience. A client might be too close to the message to understand the various ways in which it can be displayed. The audience, on the other hand, is often too broad to have a direct impact on how a communication is presented. It is frequently difficult to make an audience a part of the creative process. Unlike client and audience, graphic designers learn how to construct a message and present it successfully. They work with the client to understand the content and the purpose of the message. They may collaborate with market researchers to understand the nature of the audience. Once a design concept is chosen, the designers work with illustrators and photographers as well as with typesetters and printers and other production specialists to create the final design product.

Symbols and Logos
Symbols and logos are condensed information forms or identifiers. Symbols are abstract representations of a particular idea or identity. The Nike swish is a symbolic form which people learned to recognize as representing a particular concept or company. Logotypes are corporate identifications based on special typographical word treatment. Some identifiers are hybrid - combinations of symbols and logotypes. In order to create these identifiers, the designer must have a clear vision of the corporation, the idea to be represented, and the audience to which the message is directed.