Design Theory - Part 1: Finding the Better Graphic Designer in You

Creativity is like water. It is obstinate in its resolve to etch its own path. You cannot push it below the surface. It’s a force within you that demands attention and expression. At first it whispers, next pokes a little, and then tugs. Impatiently, it pulls you like a summons emerging in a form suited for each individual. For visually oriented people, graphic design offers a vocation to quench their creative force.

This force is always peeking out, waiting for opportunities to express itself. For a graphic designer that expression is purpose-driven. This frame of context must do two things: It has to tell a powerfully connecting story. It must answer a need that motivates an audience to a desired response.

This is the first installment in a series that will focus on:

1. the fundamental principles cast by masters over centuries;
2. the necessity for visual communication to tell a compelling story;
3. how graphic design should move and motivate those who experience it;
4. the ways to discover and tap into natural gifts that elevate your design.

But first, a tech pit-stop

For a moment, step away from your design apps. They are essential. But, “You can't do better design with a computer,” said iconic graphic and type designer Wim Crouwel. He added, “But [with a computer] you can speed up your work enormously.” Apps are a tremendous efficiency, as technology in its best form should be.

Crouwel, who passed away in 2019, was one of the greatest graphic designers in the world. He was a modernist who loved rational clarity and simplicity. He not only advocated but was obsessed with using the grid system in design. He became known for it and was affectionately called ‘Gridnik.’

Let's follow Crouwel's lead and explore what can help make us better designers.

Fundamentals: First stop, the caves of southern France

Historically speaking, it might make more sense to dig into the roots of graphic design by looking at around 3500 BC. The Bronze Age gave us hieroglyphics, cuneiform, and hieratic and demotic scripts. Or look to the 15th century with Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. In the 18th and 19th centuries, mass communications emerged with the first Industrial Revolution. Populations moved to the cities away from the farmlands. As a result, the age of modern graphic design was born. Then came the second and third waves of the Industrial Revolution. Mass production, technology, and digital transformation changed everything. Graphic design followed and adapted along with it all.

All of this is interesting and worthy of discussion for future editions of this newsletter (little plug there).

But first, the caves of our graphic design ancestors.

It is with wonder and awe that we look upon the oldest cave paintings. These were cast 20,000 to 38,000 years ago in Lascaux, Chauvet, and Altamira in southern France. These early humans managed to create magnificent and emotional depictions of their environment. Lit only by firelight, using the roughest medium, they worked their designs into history. We can see movement in herds of animals. Their design imbues respect and affection for individual animals. Their excitement about animal anatomy and their social characteristics is obvious. Mostly, we can see a tenderness in telling these stories.?They used these paintings to report about their life far down the generational lines to us in the future.

Researchers now speculate these Paleolithic artists also created an early form of language. They used markings of slashes, dots, and Y-shapes on the paintings to document animal life (and so, their own).?

Could these paintings be the earliest data visualizations? The first infographics? Is this where we now look for the true roots of graphic design?

If so, what can we take from our Paleolithic forebears to help make us the better graphic designers today that Wim Crouwel challenged us to be??

1. Our predecessors took inspiration from what was unique to their life experiences. They poured that into their work.?
2. They were practical and artistic. They had a purpose for their paintings beyond pure expression. They utilized their work to communicate something useful and meaningful.
3. Scientists tell us they added on to the paintings of generations before them. So, they learned from masters who passed on their lessons to their offspring.?
4. They understood these stories. They told new stories relevant to their lives.
5. They innovated. They created something new that was never before made. The needs of their evolving world drove their invention.?
6. They smartly used their technology and resources to enhance the quality of what they created.?
7. They used the toolbox given to them by evolution — form, color, image, and, with their proto-writing system, even typography.

Fundamentals: Form, Color, Images, Type

There are four powerful tools in a visual designer’s toolbox: form, color, images, and typography.?

Our ability to recognize form evolved first in our Reptilian Complex. That is the oldest and most primitive part of our brain. At that stage of our evolution, we could only make out basic shapes in shades of gray. From that developed our fight-or-flight response. Depending on the form they saw, they fought or ran and hid from danger. If they stayed it’s because the shape before them was friendly — they mated or were caring for their pack. That part of our brain remains a powerful influence on our most basic instincts.

When we see form in graphic design, our brain still responds in these emotional and instinctual ways. Form in graphic design has a potent effect on us.

As our brains developed, we moved on beyond shades of gray. Seeing different colors gave our species even more capabilities to survive and thrive. Imagine one tasty frog good for nutrition was green, but the poisonous one was a bright red. Our ability to see color in our environment and record and learn through it gave us a far better map. We could go farther, explore more, become more curious, and learn more. We evolved to have physiological, emotional, and cultural responses to color. Over time, certain colors trigger an association in us. Seeing the color blue can evoke positive emotions. The brain rewards positive feelings with the release of dopamine. Red makes us feel strongly. Adrenaline plays a role in that. Green gives us hope thanks to endorphins. All colors in the visual spectrum have a physiological, emotional, and cultural effect on us. That served our survival.

We feel emotions and our body responds when we see color in graphic design. Your graphic design must tell a unique story. The colors you choose can help your audience literally experience that story.

Our brains evolved to process and store information about the multitude of things in our environment. That created a complex response to everything we see. Images call up a combination of sensory perception, emotion, memory, and cognition.

When we use images in our design, it has a powerful impact on our shared archetypal understanding and our unique experiences that shape that.

Typography is a tool graphic designers use and can do so thanks to our whole brain. Communication and language require a wide variety of brain systems. That includes the obvious. But there must also be an understanding of intentions. That needs access to empathy and understanding of the actions and emotions of others. Only our modern brain understands this. Typographical form evolved thanks to our growing desire to improve language. Could those marks made on the cave walls in southern France have been where typography was born??

Combine color with the form of type on a page or a screen. Can you now imagine the many areas of the brain, body, heart, and soul that respond to a graphic designer's typographical choices?

Later installments in this series will take a deeper plunge into each of these four tools. The series will also address composition, layout, hierarchy, negative space, continuity, the audience’s experience, the story itself, and, yes, those apps.

If we at Emory Continuing Education can help you, let us know:

Click here?to contact my colleague, our amazing student success program advisor Marilia Perottoni to discuss your educational pathway.

→ Learn more about the Emory?Graphic Design and Visual Communications Certificate.?Register for the certificate - fall session begins Oct. 3, 2023.?Don't miss our Emory Fall Forward event. Use the code FALLFORWARD at registration for a 20% discount for three days, September 13-15, 2023.

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