Students of graphic design learn how to communicate ideas – often complex ideas – through visual communication. With strong problem-solving skills, they create communicative visual art using type/fonts, space, images, color, and representative art. Graduates of programs in graphic design are the artists who create the visual impressions used in many ways in our society to communicate information, feelings and interpretations of information. They bring together both visual and spatial orientation with problem-solving skills to communicate to individuals, cultures, societies and communities.
One can study graphic design in a college/university setting or in an art school. Students bring artistic talent, perception, and organizational skills and knowledge of visual effects and components of visual communication to a project-focused approach to communication. Their program of study, thus includes such areas as visual communication, materials, technologies for creating visual messages, tools, and production techniques. They also study art history, artistic methods, design theories, design of specific forms, design for specific media and project management.
With the rapid rise and proliferation of new communication media and the Internet, graphic design becomes increasingly important. The public demand for information to be available at all times and through all media is creating a growing demand for graphic designers, not only in sales and marketing, but in presentation of news, political campaigns, government communication, operations of non-profit organizations, and communication of increasingly complex ideas.
Many graphic designers choose to work in conventional workplaces – publishing companies, magazines, newspapers, television, advertising and marketing firms, as the like. Others prefer working on as freelance artists who are hired on a project-by-project basis. Regardless of the working environment, trends in technology and communication within our global society promise abundant opportunity for graphic designers.