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We live in a world where images are critical. Since the invention of print media, the need for it to look slick and eye-catching has presented a demand for skilled graphic designers.
In their 6th edition update of Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, Philip Meggs and Alston Pruvis note that during the last quarter of the Twentieth Century and the first decades of the Twenty-first Century, electronic and computer technology has advanced at an extraordinary pace, and this has transformed many areas of human activity (Meggs & Pruvis, 2016). With the development of the internet, the world moved into web publishing, and graphic designers went with them. The graphic design industry is bound to technology, and as technology continues to advance, the graphic design field adapts with it.
In their blog post proposing why graphic design is ideal for digital marketing today, the InfoGraphic Design Team recognises that consumers have a short attention span in today’s fast-paced world. They suggest that a clear stellar visual accompanied with brief content is the only way of gaining attention (infographicdesignteam.com, 2018).
The goal of this research paper is to look at how the advancement of computer technology, and with it, the rise of social media, has affected the field of graphic design.
With the influence of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, the online market has become much more interactive, robust and lively. Multiple social media platforms have been drastically altering the digital marketing world.
Adam Lehrman, the founder of Tucson Foodie and Soapbox Social Media, notes that a branding project that used to include a business card, envelope and letterhead, now needs to incorporate a profile image and cover image as well (Quora, 2014). He goes on to acknowledge that this is not always as simple as placing a logo into the middle of a square. Ideally, brands now need a square version of their logo.
As smartphones and tablets have become commonplace, any online content now needs to be tailored with these in mind. Websites need to be developed as responsive sites, with mobiles or tablets likely to be the first places the content will be viewed. It might also be necessary to create different images for use on different platforms due to the various sets of graphical resolution requirements.
With sites such as Behance, Dribbble, and to some extent, Pinterest, it is now effortless to post work and get instant feedback which can help designers refine their work fast, although sometimes there can be a lot of different opinions and one needs to learn how to filter these to ultimately improve the job and deliver the brief accurately.
In the 5th edition of Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, Philip Meggs and Alston Pruvis recognise that the introduction of the iPod placed new demands on the design of the album cover, which had suddenly shrunk to less than one square inch. Since the 1960s, the album cover had been a canvas for designers and featured iconic, generational images (Meggs & Pruvis, 2011). With the introduction of the compact disc (CD) in the 1980s, album covers had already begun to shrink, forcing more minimal designs to be used on the smaller format (ibid).
With vinyl album covers in the 12″ format, they were often limited to either having just a front and back design, or in some cases, a gatefold design could be employed – usually when it was a double album – which would give four sides for the designer to use. With the advent of the CD, while the design needed to be much smaller, multi-page booklets containing liner notes was now a possibility, and it was unusual not to find designers taking advantage of this. With mp3s and streaming sites such as iTunes and Spotify replacing the CD, the joy of reading the accompanying booklet and enjoying more images than the cover allows are gone. While social media accounts and artists web pages might be a source for this information, the details are often harder to find (Gaillot, 2017). In her article on the failed experiment of the digital album booklet for the website The Outline, Ann-Derrick Gaillot notes that while creative album artwork and promo persists, the materials that accompany the visuals and the music have yet to catch up to the ways we consume music (ibid). Gaillot also remarks that in an age where branding is often as important as skill, the lack of digital booklets feels like a wasted opportunity (ibid).
A similar problem has befallen the design for books, with many users choosing to read in digital format, be it an Amazon Kindle or similar e-reader, book covers are now rarely seen, and often only in a small format while buying the book online. Has this had an impact on how graphics are used for covers?
With the rapid rise of streaming services for films and TV shows on sites such as Netflix or Amazon Prime, the design for a traditional movie poster or key art has had to change. In the Eye on Design article about the art of the movie poster in the age of Netflix, Andrew Percival of Los Angeles based studio Percival + Associates states that streaming services like Netflix have revolutionised the industry as it has pushed companies to research new approaches in how to operate. Today, working in entertainment design means producing imagery that will remain equally intriguing at the scale of a billboard or the size of a thumbnail on our laptops and smart devices (Andersen, 2018). The designer also needs to consider what imagery is likely to compel the user to press play.
How has all of this affected the role of the graphic designer, and what changes are likely to challenge us in the future?
References
Andersen, M. (2018) The Art of the Movie Poster in the Age of Netflix, AIGA Eye on Design. [Online] Available at https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/the-art-of-the-movie-poster-in-the-age-of-netflix/ (Accessed: 4 January 2019).
Gaillot, A.-D. (2017) The failed experiment of the digital album booklet, The Outline. [Online] Available at https://theoutline.com/post/1523/digital-album-booklets-liner-notes?zd=2&zi=mgcr3hie (Accessed: 4 January 2019).
Infographic Design Team. (2018) Why Graphic Designing is Ideal for Digital Marketing Today (2018) infographicdesignteam.com. [Online] Available at https://www.infographicdesignteam.com/blog/graphic-designing-ideal-digital-marketing-today/. (Accessed: 28 December 2018)
Meggs, P. B. and Purvis, A. W. (2011) ‘Meggs’ History of Graphic Design’, p. 624. doi: 10.1021/cr050149z.
Meggs, P. B. and Pruvis, A. W. (2016) ‘The Digital Revolution — and Beyond’, in Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. 6th edn. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, pp. 570–619.
Quora. (2014) How Does Social Media Affect the Field of Graphic Design (2016) Quora. [Online] Available at https://www.quora.com/How-does-social-media-affect-the-field-of-graphic-design. (Accessed: 28 December 2018)