BA GD|IM YR1 15/16. Contextual Studies: History of Graphic design

In the early years they used to communicate with designs that they drew on cave walls. Cave paintings are believed to have been drawn 40,000 years ago. Drawings where made by craving on the walls and these are called Petroglyphs. These are considered to be graphic designs because they are delivering a message to the viewer.

North America Petroglyph

The first person to get called a Graphic Designer was an American man that worked on designing books , lettering, typography and calligraphy. His name was William Addison Dwiggins and in 1922 he managed to obtain the very first ever title for one to have as a Graphic Designer. Graphic design still existed before he was awarded this title.

Wiggins has created two typefaces that we still use and these are Electra and Caledonia. He was a really brave person with many skills and he wanted to be remembered for his type designs. Wiggins died on Christmas day in 1956.

We live in a graphic design environment that wherever we touch or see means something or tries to persuade us to do something. Graphic design has a huge impact in our lives without us noticing since this has become part of us. Also , graphic design keeps changing the way it used to a more technological world.

Graphic design is currently very popular in Logos , in fact when someone sees a logo , spontaneously will name the company of that particular logo. Graphic design is also very popular when coming to advertise - such as : Billboards , wallpapers , posters etc.. Also , a very high impact is that of graphic tattoo's that is increasing in it's popularity year by year.

Graphic design tattoo

Logos

Another few examples of how we depend on graphic designs are Ideograms * that we see everyday in our daily routine lives

*pictographs are images that represents a meaning that us human beings have been seeing from a young age and got thought their meaning. i.e . A simple rounded shape with the mark 70 on it would mean nothing for someone who never saw it before but in fact this means that the speed limit is that of 70km/h.