Introduction
The modern world has embraced the concept of design to such an extent that people can no longer imagine their surroundings without it. The design has penetrated into virtually all spheres of human activity. This fully applies to such a kind of design art as graphic design. With its manifestations, people encounter it everywhere when buying newspapers, books and glossy magazines. In addition, manifestations of graphic design can be found on flyers, labels and colorful posters, in printing and on the Internet. Graphic design has become less about creating attractive pictures and more about changing the visual and communicative environment that surrounds a person in everyday life. Today, graphic design is a whole science that combines the calculating ability of the analyst with the creative abilities of the artist. Thus, it is essential to establish the role of graphic design in people’s lives.
The Development of Graphic Design
It is crucial to determine how the field of graphic design evolved to understand its role today. This field of design can be described as relatively young since the official date of its emergence is considered to be 1964 (Walker, 2017). However, the origins of graphic design are related to ancient times. Nevertheless, even the most ancient and primitive drawings created by the human hand can be regarded as the initial stage in the evolution of graphic design.
With the passage of time, humans have become increasingly aware that expressing information through graphic symbols is more effective than simple text or verbal speech. An example of this in modern life can be different warning signs on the roads, passing the critical minimum of details to the driver in a short time (Walker, 2017). An important role in the building and development of graphic design has played in the emergence of the era of book printing.
In Europe, the history of graphic design as an independent field of activity that belongs to artistic and professional fields can be traced back to the Middle Ages. At that time, the first, still rather primitive printing presses became relatively accessible to publishers (Walker, 2017). The formation of graphic design as a specific field of creativity is directly related to the gradual merging of the two areas and the commercial art associated with the mass production of posters, newspapers, and magazines in the late XIX century (Walker, 2017). Moreover, an essential role played a wide spread of photography; the development of cinema with the subsequent expansion of television and video contributed to the growth of interest in the visual forms of expression and perception.
Another significant stage associated with the development of graphic design is the emergence of digital technology and the creation of personal computers. This gave graphic designers the newest tools, making it possible to change their work fundamentally (Walker, 2017). Computers made it possible to complete all the blanks in a software domain. This enables designers to experiment with different solutions and quickly correct their mistakes if necessary. In the century of modern computer hardware and the Internet, graphic design has become more available and accessible.
Thus, graphic design has undergone quite a long way of its own development. In the past, graphic design was understood to be exclusively the artistic arrangement and mounting on a typewritten sheet of text with an illustration to produce a visual and verbal sequence. Nowadays, the sphere of activity of graphic designers has expanded considerably (Walker, 2017). Graphic design is now defined as the creation of graphical images in order to embody specific ideas. In today’s world, the importance of visual forms of expression has grown unusually.
The Significance of Graphic Design in the Modern World
Graphic design has the informative function of explaining various issues and emotions to people, causing a person to have certain feelings and form the appropriate opinion. It is evident that graphic design is closely intertwined with advertising and fine art and uses approximately similar concepts, elements, principles, and techniques. For example, if the primary purpose of advertising is to sell, then graphic design is essential to convey to people some ideas (Zheng et al., 2019). To solve this challenge, graphic designers use a variety of visual communication.
It should be mentioned that graphic design is different from ordinary or, for example, industrial design. That is because the primary objective is to create a comfortable and beautiful all that surrounds humans in everyday life. Graphic design is not related to the artistic design of objects but the world of information (Zheng et al., 2019). The means of graphic design can be a variety of visual communications, from a brief advertisement to a substantial electronic information board. A graphic designer works with graphic images capable of pushing the viewer to the action or inferences that the creator of the information message needs (Zheng et al., 2019). Thus, graphic designers attempt to translate information into a visual language that most people can understand. With the help of graphical images, they can convey virtually any information to the recipient without resorting to lengthy verbal explanations.
It is important to note that a sociological study has been conducted in Iranian society regarding the competition of products in the consumer market. Eivazi & Aqababaee (2017) examined the impact of graphic design on consumer choice. They found that the visualization of depicted production processes had a significant influence on people’s motivation to buy a product. Accordingly, graphic design has become a method to attract more buyers. Eivazi & Aqababaee (2017) used a questionnaire to obtain responses from customers of the “Kosar 5” store, which specializes in napkins. Their research determined that the choice of customers depends on religious, cultural, and taste factors. Thus, graphic design can highlight specific individual characteristics of goods and stimulate their sales. Meanwhile, Oladumiye (2018) conducted a study where more than 400 respondents were surveyed. They indicated that creative design created with the help of graphic design professionals significantly influenced their product choices.
It is also significant to note that there are different types of graphic design. For example, where text is used, typography plays a significant role, in the creation of verbal text by means of typesetting (Zheng et al., 2019). In this case, an important point is the choice of font, the placement of titles, parts of the text, or headlines, both concerning each other and in relation to the newspaper page or the field of the poster. Designers deal with brand names, labels, and packaging in graphic design, closely related to industrial production and its products. In addition, graphic design is widely used in commerce and entertainment (Zheng et al., 2019). The graphic designer’s work is associated with creating advertising brochures, catalogs, and posters related to a particular advertising company.
Graphic design has a significant role in creating a company’s corporate identity, that is, in defining a permanent, memorable visual image of all associated with the enterprise, its activities, and its products. These fundamental corporate identity elements, which graphic designers are developing, include a logo, font, color scheme, and compositional principles (Zheng et al., 2019). Aspects of corporate identity can cover everything associated with a company’s everyday activities, from business documentation to staff members’ clothing patterns.
Therefore, the following directions belong to this field of graphic design. Typography is the ability to present accurate textual product content. It is also the design of printing and printed materials, such as newspapers, magazines, posters, and stickers. However, graphic design includes the development of corporate identity, the definition of a set of visual techniques united by a common direction inherent in all products, attributes, and advertising companies of the firm (Zheng et al., 2019). In today’s world, people often use web design as a field of graphic design and development of orientation systems, such as warning signs and symbols. Indeed, in everyday life, one can observe graphic design on the packaging.
Indeed, graphic design is currently most involved in advertising, publishing and printing, and other areas of mass communication, where it helps in sales and disseminating specific ideas. Graphic design forms the company’s image and visually represents the business’s direction, which helps attract potential customers. The success of any advertising firm directly depends on the quality of design. Moreover, the finished design solution should always have an attractive and original composition, which would cause the viewer to have relevant associations, such as trust in the brand or quality.
In an environment of increasingly intense competition in the market since the company’s inception and throughout its life, management is constantly faced with the need to use graphic design. After all, any business strives to distinguish itself from its competitors; besides, it is essential that potential customers are not just aware of the company’s activities but also remember them (Zheng et al., 2019). To solve this problem without graphic design, providing information in an easy, understandable visual form to humans is complicated (Zheng et al., 2019). When working with graphical images, graphic designers can excite people with a sudden memory to serve as a pleasant association or provide them with aesthetic, perhaps even intellectual, pleasure.
It should be comprehended that graphic design is related to many other fields. It includes fine art, geometry, typesetting, drafting, and technical innovation. Accordingly, this design area incorporates techniques and tools common to many other related fields (Zheng et al., 2019). With time, the craft of graphic design began to operate more and more in marketing, economic and cultural communications. Therefore, a graphic designer often collaborates with other specialists, psychologists, sociologists, marketing experts, and art historians to perform any project (Zheng et al., 2019). This is required to develop the best strategy for processing information and turning it into specific visual signals that the viewer will interpret immediately and unambiguously.
However, designers’ competence also includes relevant knowledge about the market, consumers, and psychological perception capabilities. After all, in their work, graphic designers are engaged in collecting and analyzing information, defining the problem and, setting the goal, creating a general design concept (Zheng et al., 2019). Only after that do they proceed directly to developing graphic solutions and harmonious composition. The professional qualities and qualifications of contemporary graphic designers are now determined by how freely they know the methods of “informational design” (Zheng et al., 2019). It is also essential to be capable of managing visual means of communication. Thus, graphic design today is used in many activity fields, bearing decorative, informative, and emotional functions. The projects elaborated by expert graphic designers are often termed visual creations, and their creators have the same copyright as, for instance, literary writers or artwork creators (Zheng et al., 2019). Therefore, graphic design has become an autonomous and actively growing direction of contemporary decorative art.
The view of design as a source of socio-cultural change in the world corresponds most closely to the current state of both cultures and the place of man in this powerful machine of progress. To understand the proper direction of modern design, it is essential to consider a number of factors influencing its further progress. These factors may have a different nature: negative, positive, spiritual, and material. Studying features of the formation of interrelations of design and the person can become a key to understanding the various social processes (Zheng et al., 2019). The relevance of this topic lies in the fact that the changes introduced into life by the individual are the product of design to one extent or another (Zheng et al., 2019). This applies not only to the object world surrounding people but also to the development of various social spheres of life.
However, it is impossible to argue that developer designers aim only to satisfy everyday human needs. There is an expansion of understanding of the subject of design; there is a new design, namely the “design of social context” (Zheng et al., 2019). Thus, the scope of innovation extends to the creation of the event and the construction of lifestyles. Designers in the modern world are not only reformers and bearers of change but also a kind of inspectors of these changes. It is designers, even at the stage of ideas, who can control the competent development of their concept, avoiding the emergence of errors that may subsequently have a negative impact on the individual (Zheng et al., 2019). It can be concluded that design in the modern world is, first and foremost, a meaningful activity for professionals who are aware of the importance and responsibility for their actions. It is through design that new social values are created, the relationship between human beings and art.
Design as an Instrument of Social Change
The entire life of modern people is full of design products. Design surrounds humans everywhere, in the home, the workplace, and in recreation. The function and importance of design in human life are only expanding over time. Stuff becomes a kind of indicator of a person’s standard of living, well-being, and social security. The rational use of designed products in everyday life is the basis for the person’s physical and, most importantly, moral development (Li, 2019). It is interesting to note that any social structure that does not have a minimum of the object and material security is condemned to slow extinction or assimilation of cultural and technical achievements of other social systems. People who do not have safe and comfortable tools, instruments, housing, and clothing inevitably find themselves in chronic cultural impoverishment (Li, 2019). This is why it is crucial to consider design consistently as a vehicle of social change. Thus, it becomes inevitable to understand that change can be both positive and negative.
Technical progress is becoming a component of social and individual progress. However, this generates new needs and, consequently, new problems. People require a personal approach to themselves on the part of the designer. After all, humans are highly diverse, and the individual sensitivity of a person can be determined by various factors: age, gender, education, occupation, and other personal qualities (Li, 2019). To increase the effectiveness of cooperation between the designer and the consumer, it becomes possible to use the ideas of “participatory” design. In the late 1960s, the term “participatory design” was widely discussed, and participatory methods were applied to the organization of groups of architects and industrial designers (Li, 2019, para 5). Co-participatory decision-making processes in the design practice of traditionally operating construction and design bureaus required serious consideration of the opinions of members of different walks of life. Thus, modern design primarily aims to concretize and individualize the consumer, introducing methods of co-participation into design practice. The designer becomes a kind of conduit between art and the individual.
The challenges of design today are quite different from those of the past. On the one hand, a designer is a creative profession that requires specific artistic abilities, a “sense of beauty,” and a measure of proportion (Li, 2019). However, in practice, design appears to be a functional element of industrial structures. Thus, it should be oriented, first, to solve the corporate tasks of achieving high profits using design. Secondly, for certain, already formed demands of various social, national, and age groups of the population.
Accordingly, it is essential to consider the place of the design function. Indeed, if it is a matter of commercial advantage, objects often devoid of this function are in high demand in today’s market. More attention is attracted to them exactly by the striking design and not by the fact that a person needs them at the moment (Li, 2019). However, some design objects have a bright appearance and a deep functional content. Nevertheless, most consumers buying this thing does not use even half of the functions contained in it and are guided only by trends in fashion. In this way, they are attempting to maintain their social status by means of this thing (Li, 2019). Therefore, designers must choose between commercial gain or creative satisfaction and realization of themselves in art. The majority of designer products are outside the commercial market.
It has already been mentioned that design is an agent of social change and can be both positive and negative. There is an opinion that fashion trends and diversity of choice are only the impositions of the idea of certain groups of people who manipulate the masses with the help of design (Li, 2019). The development of mass production of goods carries with it an important economic factor. This product group is accessible to many population segments, which is certainly a positive side of the issue. However, in this case, it is not crucial to discuss each person’s individuality.
It is essential to note that it is not the mass design that makes a person faceless and merging with the crowd, but the lack of an elementary style and a clear sense of personal identity. Skillful and correct handling of things, whether clothing, interior or even mass-produced items, will help express the uniqueness and individuality that their owner has brought to them (Li, 2019). It follows that one always has a choice. Thus, if the consumer lacks a sense of taste and proportion, the person will still choose a thing created by an unscrupulous designer.
The design aims to bring a person closer to the world of beauty, quality, and professional design. Connecting the human being is a thing that has become one of the primary functions of modern design. The history of innovation is inextricably linked with the development of industrial technology (Li, 2019). Therefore, the emergence of new production technologies immediately entails the development of new objects by designers, and the development of new design products stimulates the evolution of industrial technology. Consequently, all these trends in the advancement of industrial technology have one goal: to bring people closer to the world of beauty and high-quality and professional design.
It is essential to emphasize the function of design in everyday life; everything that a person makes in art nowadays is imbued with an aesthetic sense of the beautiful at the level of intuition. However, the concept of art, a kind of special activity aimed primarily at creating and expressing the aesthetic, has a long history(Li, 2019). It begins with the origins of culture itself, but it has not always been isolated from the valuable and domestic or cult-religious activity as an independent and self-valuable type. Nowadays, it is possible to trace a close connection between art, in the form of design, and people’s everyday life and their way of life (Li, 2019). Virtually all objects of creation made in time serve a modern person, specifically in everyday life. Design’s functional value, in this case, can not be overestimated.
The Aesthetic and Humanizing Function
Design appeals to the aestheticization of the object world that surrounds human beings. Moreover, the natural is not an overcoming of the practical but a rejection of its totality, allowing to achieve spiritual disclosure. Suitable needs cease to be the only ones and are included in the broader context of being. There is only a minimal possibility of measuring the “share of aesthetics” by considering the group or class of perceptual subjects, religious views, and education level in the thing’s analysis (Wang, 2020). Therefore, judging the share of beauty in each particular item is problematic since this is a purely individual aspect of evaluating a work of art. However, it should not be forgotten that design is intended to harmonize the human environment. If possible, humans should protect it from low-quality conveyorized goods created by non-professional designers.
Design is inextricably connected to its consumer; all that designers produce is intended to serve people to satisfy their needs. As individual as each person is, and also individual as the environment one creates around oneself. It cannot be stated with any certainty that one or another object has no right to exist because people think it is bland. Everything is individual, and if a single object is made for a particular consumer, it has exactly the function that this specific personal needs (Wang, 2020). However, this statement is only valid when an individual, unique approach to the design of a product is involved.
Conclusion
Thus, design is a multifaceted structure, just as each person is distinct and unique. Indeed, without the social context, the design would be just a decorative art, a set of blueprints. The high social significance of design products and design, in general, determines the importance it acquires in the modern world. No people are indifferent to what surrounds them; what object environment becomes a quality characteristic of the standard of living. It should be noted that the design penetrates all spheres of human life. In this case, it is difficult to overestimate its influence on the life of modern people. Identification of designers as change agents imposes a high responsibility and increases the social significance of their work. The importance of modern design becomes the cooperation of the consumer and the designer for the most effective result of joint activity. Currently, design and its social component are inseparable, as innovation is intended to harmonize the environment around a person, bringing comfort and individuality into it.
Literature Review
Eivazi, Z., & Aqababaee, E. (2017). Graphic design based on the sociology of taste. Scientific Journal of Pazhuhesh-e Honar, 6(12), 53-63.
The authors focused on the factors that influence customers when choosing goods and services. They conducted a sociological survey, which helped to establish that with the help of graphic design, sellers can emphasize certain features of goods. Eivazi & Aqababaee (2017) studied that the choice of customers is correlated with their taste, religion, and cultural characteristics. Thus, they select products with packaging and other distinctive marks that correspond to their preferences. Therefore, graphic design is a marketing instrument that is essential in the modern world.
Li, Z. (2019). Application research of digital image technology in graphic design. Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, 65.
Li (2019) explores the phenomenon of social change and establishes how graphic design relates to it. The author argues that in today’s world, the understanding of beauty has different definitions, which is why graphic designers adapt to the loss of consumers. At the same time, they create products according to fashion trends. This enables the graphic designer’s final product to be adapted to create the desired appearance for society. Moreover, Li (2019) found that the job of a graphic designer has also changed with the passage of time. Many people can now do the task by using handheld tools.
Oladumiye, E. B. (2018). Graphic design theory research and application in packaging technology. Art and Design Review, 6(1), 29-42.
The author established the importance and application of graphic design theories in product packaging technology. The researcher used a descriptive method at the Federal University of Technology Akure and selected a sample of 450 respondents. Oladumiye (2018) established a relationship between the ways and methods of graphic design and the creation of attractive product packaging. Accordingly, this confirms the application of graphic design in modern life. At the same time, the author’s statement proves that graphic design is significant for each person.
Wang, Z. (2020). Humanized design concept in product packaging design. Journal of Physics, 1578(1), 012196
Wang (2020) determined that graphic design plays an important role in the aesthetic appearance of products. The authors argue that humans have different views on the aesthetic beauty of objects. These views depend on many variables. Therefore, the challenge of graphic design is to create not only aesthetically pleasing products but also universally comfortable for everyone. Thus, graphic designers consider the individuation of specific population groups and evaluate the practicality of the objects they create. Together, these features make it possible to present a harmonious product that will be ideal for a particular group of consumers.
Walker, S. (2017). Research in graphic design. The Design Journal, 20(5), 549-559.
Walker (2017) explores the origins of graphic design and the process of its formation. The author argues that even in ancient times, people used drawings on rocks, which are the antithesis of modern graphic design. Moreover, Walker (2017) traces the development of graphic design during the period of printing presses. As new technologies were invented, computers became the primary means of creating graphic design. Thus, after a long process of modernization, the methods of creating graphic design became technically more sophisticated but more accessible to people.
Zheng, X., Qiao, X., Cao, Y., & Lau, R. W. (2019). Content-aware generative modeling of graphic design layouts. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 38(4), 1-15.
The authors note that graphic design is an essential tool for creating the visual appeal of products. At the same time, different types of fonts, colors, and images are aimed at conveying the main advertising idea. Thus, graphic design is a method to create effective advertising of products. Zheng et al. (2019) will examine the effectiveness of product advertising with the use of new graphic design technologies.
References
Eivazi, Z., & Aqababaee, E. (2017). Graphic design based on the sociology of taste. Scientific Journal of Pazhuhesh-e Honar, 6(12), 53-63. Web.
Li, Z. (2019). Application research of digital image technology in graphic design. Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, 65, Web.
Oladumiye, E. B. (2018). Graphic design theory research and application in packaging technology. Art and Design Review, 6(1), 29-42. Web.
Wang, Z. (2020). Humanized design concept in product packaging design. Journal of Physics, 1578(1), 012196. Web.
Walker, S. (2017). Research in graphic design. The Design Journal, 20(5), 549-559. Web.
Zheng, X., Qiao, X., Cao, Y., & Lau, R. W. (2019). Content-aware generative modeling of graphic design layouts. ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 38(4), 1-15. Web.