The Work Of A Good Graphic Designer

The work of a good graphic designer

The graphic design or visual communication consists in the projection and production of visual objectives with the purpose of transmitting a message of public interest effectively. The visual objects produced by graphic design are very varied. Among them we can mention posters, informative flyers, logos and logos, typography, advertising image, animation, etc. The graphic design uses the use of graphic signs, organized from aesthetic and functional criteria that consolidate the expression of a concept or message. In this way, the design is aimed at solving a need for communication. Visual communication should take into account the communicative capacity of visual signs, such as typography, color, tone, point, line, direction, contour, texture, scale, dimensions and movement. It is, therefore, a matter of composition. The effectiveness of these signs is related to the social context. The graphic designer must include the conventions and codes of social communication. It is a profession with a great demand due to the development of technology and current forms through which human beings communicate.

The importance of graphic design is based on the fact that it develops different strategies to achieve communication from a visual approach;This fact is of great relevance from the point of view of marketing, since it makes possible the elaboration of different presentations that will immediately communicate value to a potential buyer. The graphic design relies on a group of elements that help conceive, organize, project, and perform

visual communications or graphic works. Some of them are: the point, line and plane, space and volume, asymmetry and symmetry, rhythm and balance, texture and color, figure and background, time and movement.

The term "graphic design" was not yet used when typography was already included for newspapers and magazines. We could even go back much further with the drawings and representations found in caves that took place before our era. Human beings always had the need to communicate with each other. The transmission of concepts, both visually and verbally, is one of the axes of our progress. Throughout history we used different writing and painting techniques to transmit ideas, and although the tools were evolving, the essence is always the same: establish a link with our fellow men.

During the last years of the 19th century, with the appearance of new composition technologies, important changes in work schemes within the scope of graphic arts were produced, especially in relation to automation and specialization. Already for the year 1440 Johannes Gutenberg designs the printing press, an artifact capable of reproducing texts and images on paper on mass scale. The modern printing industry was born, this allowed to launch endless printed products worldwide. New materials, new inks, typographic sources of all kinds are created and a new profession is created: the typographer or box, a technician in layout and adjustment of texts that would later be printed by the printers. It was from this moment when specialists begin to appear for each stage of the processes related to design and print, printers, etc. In several centuries, the manual had passed to the mechanical and subsequently automatic, leaving the market limited and betting on a massive market thanks to the growing demand for printed material as well as the development of advertising, making not only increased thecreation of newspapers and magazines but the posters was a trend again. With the arrival of the twentieth century a great generation of designers would arrive in all aspects, which also influenced to a greater or lesser extent in graphic design. From this time we can say that the tendency of Art Nouveau or Modernism created graphic design as a method of expression and communication of new ideas.

Visual communication itself has such a long story that it cannot be established for sure who was the inventor of graphic design, because all those who have had something to do throughout history have contributed and have their part of prominence. However, according to Francisco Barber in his online article entitled “Who invented graphic design?”In 2016 we refer to the French painter Henri Toulouse Lautrec as one of the parents of graphic design, due to its elaboration in 1891 as one of the first advertising works of multiple reproduction. Then, it was in 1900 when the posters became a form of expression. From the 1940s, the graphic design began to be shown in the propaganda posters of the time. An example is that of "We Can Do It" (We can do it) with Rosie, the riveter. The slogans that were used were short, they went to the point and graphics were added that were according to what wanted to express. As soon as the technology began to change and became accessible to a greater number of people, the entire industry that would later be known as graphic design was emerging. Although they were not even close to getting the computer graphics that we know today, you can already appreciate the influence of the balance between positive and negative space.

In 1984, Macintosh took Mac Paint with which designers could have access to a much simpler tool to use. On the other hand, postcript language allowed designers to put both the text and the graphics on the same page to be able to send them to print, instead of using a drawing table to assemble designs. With the arrival of Microsoft in 1985, operating a computer no longer implied having to learn more, it was enough to press a few buttons. In the 2000 there was a new border for graphic designers. Not only the tools began to be more powerful, suddenly people could also design on mobile devices. The movement began to be more focused, designers began to look for ways that even static logos seem in motion.

In Puerto Rico, the graphic arts have been part of the culture since the early nineteenth century, when the first prints were established to produce small engravings, lithographic scenes and portraits used in newspapers and illustrations of old manuscripts. It was not until the end of the 1940s and early 1950s when graphic arts, especially the poster, were conceived as a feasible means of artistic expression. In May 1949, the first elected governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín (1898-1980), created a division in the Department of Public Instruction, called the Community Education Division (Divedco, Community Education Division). Divedco was established with the purpose of educating the community through the publication of books, films and a variety of educational programs related to cultural heritage and sociology of the island.

Muñoz Marín recruited the help of American photographer Edwin Rosskam to administer the division. Later, Jack Delano, a well -known photographer, and his wife, Irene Delano, a graphic artist, joined them;They took care of the cinematography and graphics units of the division, respectively. These units within the division served as a type of school that gave artists the opportunity to relate to the production of films, photographs, paintings and graphics. Programs sponsored by the division needed an effective means of communication. The artists used traditional folklore: Spanish and African roots linked to the inheritance taína.

In the early 1950s, many of the best -known Puerto Rican artists were called experiments with techniques and media;Among them, Antonio Martorell, Julio Rosado del Valle, Rafael Tufiño, Félix Bonilla, Antonio Maldonado and Lorenzo Homar. Later, under the direction of Homar, the artists produced excellent serigraphs and graphic illustrations for many of the publications and programs sponsored by the Instruction Department to inform the public about the programs;The medium would be the Puerto Rican poster. One of the most significant characteristics of the Puerto Rican poster was the knowledge that the artist had about the themes they represented. For example, in the exhibition poster, the artist interprets the patriotic image according to the artist’s style whose work is exhibited. This conscious imposition limits the artist’s freedom of expression as an individual, but allows one of the main purposes of the poster to be fulfilled: that the message reaches the observer directly using a frame of reference associated with the subject.

The division posters had covered various: they announced films that Divedco prepared to educate people about housing, hygiene and health problems. When the Government established the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture in 1955 to promote national culture, the poster went from an educational function to a cultural, promoting music, archeology, literature and theater, and architecture programs. Lorenzo Homar joined the Institute and established a workshop that trained young artists in works of art. They learned to make linoleum, wood engraving, screen print. They were also taught engraving and lithography, but to a lesser extent. During this time, the Puerto Rican poster received international recognition when seventeen in 1960 were selected to be included in the International Poster Exhibition in Ontario, Canada. Since then, the Puerto Rican poster has continued to flourish and is one of the most significant artistic expressions in Puerto Rico.

Antonio Martorell was one of the most prolific artists in the contemporary Puerto Rican field, and direct heir of the plastic tradition initiated by the teachers of the 50th generation. He began his graphic learning under the direction of Lorenzo Homar in the graphics workshop of the Puerto Rican Culture Institute. In 1968 he established the Alacrán workshop, one of the first independent graphic workshops in Puerto Rico. He has taught graphics in Puerto Rico, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, and has created, organized and sponsored multimedia artistic, community and cultural events, in his passion for human and artistic expression, which does not separate. Matorrel carried his art and design to different parts of the world was honest by his art such as;In 1968, Design Award at the American Institute of Graphic Arts, New York, United States, in 1991 he was recognized as the best installation. International Association of Art Critics, Chapter of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2009 he was recognized as an honorary member at the Center for Caribbean Art Studies, Dominican Republic. He is currently a resident artist at the Puerto Rico Art Museum and provides his services as a mentor at the University of Puerto Rico in the Cayey enclosure since 1986.

Undoubtedly, graphic design has been in each of the stages of human evolution since before what is in itself is formed. Although its essence has evolved over the years and ends it remains the same. Without graphic design we could not know much about our history and as the need to communicate with our fellow men and leave legacies caused them to create artifacts that perhaps never dreaming our ancestors but we could not imagine without such tools. Even children before being able to speak and express themselves through art and their curious designs can tell us what they want, yearn or feel. Art apart from being a profession and a career based on creativity is also used in other concentrations such as some mental health.

However, in the case of Puerto Rico, the fact of the little or almost no information that can be found on the subject is unfortunate, having both a qualified graphic artist worth knowing their stories. It is a pity that many of them, and those that are in full growth, emigrate to other countries such as the United States, Spain, Argentina, etc. To be able to bloom and have more recognition. Although in a subtle way everything that catches our attention, it connects us, we bought, we listen, we read is due to a good job of a graphic designer.

It is the key tool for the marketing of almost everything we know. This is where without paying much attention we emphasize the saying "we judge the book on its cover".

The work of the graphic designer is to capture your attention and take a short and precise message. Even the memes used in social networks are related in what is graphic design. Although the work of the graphic designer is based on creativity and has the flexibility of capturing ideas with their own techniques, these are also students of their society in question. Since they must know the social environment, the social language and the level of that society so that the messages they want to carry are receptively receptive.