Graphic Communication

The Graphic Communication Handbook is a comprehensive and detailed introduction to the theories and practices of the graphics industry. It traces the history and development of graphic design, explores issues that affect the industry, examines its analysis through communications theory, explains how to do each section of the job, and advises on entry into the profession. The Graphic Communication Handbook covers all areas within the industry including pitching, understanding the client, researching a job, thumbnail drawings, developing concepts, presenting to clients, working in 2D, 3D, motion graphics and interaction graphics, situating and testing the job, getting paid, and getting the next job. The industry background, relevant theory and the law related to graphic communications are situated alongside the teaching of the practical elements. Features include: introductions that frame relevant debates case studies, examples and illustrations from a range of campaigns philosophical and technical explanations of topics and their importance.

Complete coverage of basic design principles illustrated by student examples Design for Communication offers a unique approach to mastering the basic design principles, conceptual problem-solving methods, and critical-thinking skills that distinguish graphic designers from desktop technicians. This book presents forty-two basic to advanced graphic design and typography assignments collaboratively written by college educators to teach the fundamental processes, concepts, and techniques through hands-on applications. Each assignment is illustrated with actual student solutions, and each includes a process narrative and an educator's critical analysis revealing the reasoning behind the creative strategies employed by each individual student solution. Assignments are organized from basic to advanced within six sections: * The elements and principles of design * Typography as image * Creative word play * Word and image * Grid and visual hierarchy * Visual advocacy Design for Communication is a highly visual resource of instruction, information, ideas, and inspiration for students and professionals.

Learn what it takes to become a skilled graphic communicator! This edition of Graphic Communications Today is a staple for beginners as well as a smart, easy-to-use resource guaranteed to spur the creativity of aspiring designers, professional graphic artists, journalists and others. Written in a personal and engaging style, and loaded with examples of some of the finest graphic art in the world, the authors explain modern design principles and shows readers how to apply them to their own work. Extraordinarily complete coverage straddles a variety of media, including: magazines, newspapers, television and film, interactive multimedia, Web sites and more!

A comprehensive history of data visualization—its origins, rise, and effects on the ways we think about and solve problems. With complex information everywhere, graphics have become indispensable to our daily lives. Navigation apps show real-time, interactive traffic data. A color-coded map of exit polls details election balloting down to the county level. Charts communicate stock market trends, government spending, and the dangers of epidemics. A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication tells the story of how graphics left the exclusive confines of scientific research and became ubiquitous. As data visualization spread, it changed the way we think. Michael Friendly and Howard Wainer take us back to the beginnings of graphic communication in the mid-seventeenth century, when the Dutch cartographer Michael Florent van Langren created the first chart of statistical data, which showed estimates of the distance from Rome to Toledo. By 1786 William Playfair had invented the line graph and bar chart to explain trade imports and exports. In the nineteenth century, the “golden age” of data display, graphics found new uses in tracking disease outbreaks and understanding social issues. Friendly and Wainer make the case that the explosion in graphical communication both reinforced and was advanced by a cognitive revolution: visual thinking. Across disciplines, people realized that information could be conveyed more effectively by visual displays than by words or tables of numbers. Through stories and illustrations, A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication details the 400-year evolution of an intellectual framework that has become essential to both science and society at large.

This book is a survey of the complex world of graphic communication. It is focused largely on print, both conventional and digital, and the processes that make it possible. It is also about the myriad ways digital technology¿from desktop design to web-based publishing, commerce, and IT¿affects the art, science, and business of printing.

"Whether a map explaining the subway system, an Internet meme about womens empowerment, or a logo on a laptop, graphic design is everywhere. The Art of Graphic Communication discusses what todays artists are doing, how they attract a following, and what they are saying through their artwork"--

The sophistication of the photographic process has had two dramatic results—freeing the artist from the confines of journalistic reproductions and freeing the scientist from the unavoidable imprecision of the artist's prints. So released, both have prospered and produced their impressive nineteenth- and twentieth-century outputs. It is this premise that William M. Ivins, Jr., elaborates in Prints and Visual Communication, a history of printmaking from the crudest wood block, through engraving and lithography, to Talbot's discovery of the negative-positive photographic process and its far reaching consequences.

What is the point of graphic design? Is it advertising or is it art? What purpose does it serve in our society and culture? Malcolm Barnard explores how meaning and identity are at the core of every graphic design project and argues that the role and function of graphic design is, and always has been, communication. Drawing on a range of theoretical approaches including those of Derrida, Saussure, Foucault, and Barthes, and taking examples from advertising, magazines, illustration, website design, comics, greetings cards and packaging, Graphic Design as Communication looks at how graphic design contributes to the formation of social and cultural identities. Malcolm Barnard discusses the ways in which racial/ethnic groups, age groups and gender groups are represented in graphic design, as well as how images and texts communicate with different cultural groups. He also explores how graphic design relates to both European and American modernism, and its relevance to postmodernism and globalisation in the twenty-first century and asks why, when graphic design is such an integral part of our society and culture, it is not acknowledged and understood in the same way that art is.

What graphic design is, what designers need to know, and who becomes a designer have all evolved as the computer went from being a tool to also becoming our primary medium for communication. How jobs are advertised and how prospective candidates communicate with prospective employers have changed as well, as has the culture and context for many workplaces, requiring new approaches for how to find your first (and last) position. Through clear prose, a broad survey of contexts where designers find themselves in the present day, and interviews with designers, The AIGA Guide to Careers in Graphic and Communication Design is an invaluable resource for finding your place in this quickly changing and growing field. The book includes interviews with over 40 designers at all levels working in-house and out-of-house in studios, consultancies, or alone, including: Nicholas Blechman, The New Yorker; Rob Giampietro, Google; Njoki Gitahi, IDEO; Hilary Greenbaum, Whitney Museum; Holly Gressley, Vox Media; Cemre Güngör, Facebook; Natasha Jen, Pentagram; Renda Morton, The New York Times; and Alisa Wolfson, Leo Burnett Worldwide.

Graphic Design for Architects is a handbook of techniques, explanations and examples of graphic design most relevant to architects. The book covers a variety of scales of graphic design, everything from portfolio design and competition boards, to signage and building super-graphics – to address every phase of architectural production. This book combines and expands on information typically found in graphic design, information design, and architectural graphics books. As architectural communication increases to include more territory and components of a project, it is important for designers to be knowledgeable about the various ways in which to communicate visually. For instance, signage should be designed as part of the process – not something added at the end of a project; and the portfolio is a manifestation of how the designer works, not just an application to sell a design sensibility. In thinking about architecture as a systematic and visual project, the graphic design techniques outlined in this book will help architects process, organize and structure their work through the lens of visual communication. Each chapter is titled and organized by common architectural modes of communication and production. The chapters speak to architects by directly addressing projects and topics relevant to their work, while the information inside each chapter presents graphic design methods to achieve the architects’ work. In this way, readers don’t have to search through graphic design books to figure out what’s relevant to them – this book provides a complete reference of graphic techniques and methods most useful to architects in getting their work done.