OUGD402 - Study task 3 - What is Graphic Design? - Part 2

What is Graphic Design? What does it mean to you?

Graphic design is appropriate, creative, obsessive, frustrating, organised, structured, ongoing...

Although all Graphic Design is different, there are a basic set of questions that most successful designs/ designers ask themselves when creating work:

• hand drawn and/or digital?
• think about the language/ dialogue
• personal opinions of the designer
• information and how you communicate it
• think about the scale/ space/ format
• think about your media, it doesn't just have to be print based
• what can be created successfully in the time frame?
• think about colour
• think about structure/ organisation
• image and/or type? image as type/type as image?

After bringing in printed versions of our 25+ images from task 2, we discovered that there was a way to classify these into a further 5 categories that most successful designs fulfil:

• Function
• Design Context
• Scale
• Tone of Voice
• Message

Then, in groups, we wrote down lists of what main traits of designs we considered to fall under these categories, IE;

Function: what is it doing? why does it exist?

- to inform/ decorate/ instruct/ promote/ educate/ warn/ advertise/ explain/ entertain/ inspire/ express/ present

Context: who is the target audience? what is it?

- branding/ publishing/ campaigning/ advertising...

-time/era

-audience

-class

-gender

-style

Tone of Voice: how does it suit the target audience?

-informal/ playful/ chatty/ comical/ powerful/ inspirational/ proud/ simplistic/ witty/ serious/ satirical/ angry

Message/Ideas/Concept: what is it trying to say?

-awareness/ decorative/ political

Intended Scale: what is its intended size? is it effectively applied?

-billboard/ poster/ side of building/ Ad shell/ side of bus/ magazine/ TV/ web

Using this list as a starting point, here are a range of examples of design appearing in these categories:

FUNCTION

INTENDED SCALE

MESSAGE/ IDEA/ CONCEPT

TONE OF VOICE

CONTEXT