Graphic Design
It could be argued that Graphic Design is a very old profession going back to when humans started to make meaningful marks on cave walls. Less prosaically, it can be traced back to the development of the printing press in the sixteenth century, but what does a graphic designer actually do?
The layman might say that graphic designers make pictures and paintings, but this is more appropriately ascribed to artists and illustrators. Some might say that they design type or fonts, but again, this can be better ascribed to another profession like a font designer. What about designing how text looks on a page? That would be the job of a typographer. A graphic designer has to know about all of these other disciplines but not necessarily carry out any of them.
Graphic Design is about conveying a message to be mass communicated. This could be in any media and the graphic designer is in charge of the idea or concept that drives this communication.
The profession of graphic designer started in the print medium, hence the term “graphic” in the name, and could be divided into designing for magazines and books, packaging, corporate identity, posters and advertising. As new media developed, like film and television, the need for design for what was seen on the screen was acknowledged and the graphic designer moved into these media. With the growth of the World Wide Web, the graphic designer has a new media to master, and in these formative years, graphic designers are more than rising to the challenge.