The Relationship Between Technology And Graphic Design

The requirements of a graphic designer changed dramatically with the introduction of the personal computer as a design tool. A certain level of credibility was injected into the profession since designers were no longer viewed as a profession where designers played with their coloured pencils and markers but instead showcases great skills on a machine that was still quite new to most people. The same principles of design theory and composition still applied to the craft, however, the execution of the design process moved away from the drawing board and into the desktop computer. In their beginnings, computers were still somewhat awkward to operate and very few companies had the financial resources to own more than a few workstations.

In this day and age, the internet is filled with users who design. They design their profile page on social media, they design their blog or design their own website. Everybody is a designer nowadays since they have a computer and access to the internet. With the rise of self-proclaimed designers around, you would almost think that there is no work for professional designers left. However looking upon the internet, there seems to be something going on, and not entirely right. With the internet becoming a continuously growing part of daily life, it also intruded into the work field of graphic designers. As experts of communication, they must know what to do with it. But why is that the public wants to create them so much without the need of a professional?

In 1993, Ronald Labuz published The Computer in Graphic Design: From Technology to Style. This book serves as a great resource in better understanding the origins of the computer in graphic design. According to Labuz, “The first attempts at computer graphic design were marked by an unfortunate combination of limited computing power and undeniably inadequate aesthetics. Many experiments were conducted by engineers and technicians rather than trained graphic designers. After the first seminar in computer graphic design, sponsored by the Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979, more interest was shown. In most cases, the interest did not translate into involvement because of limited access to technology powerful enough to produce valuable results.” Labuz further explained, “Pagination technology not dissimilar to today’s desktop publishing environment was widely available as early as 1981. The Bedford and Penta front ends were, however, priced far beyond the pocketbook of most users. Systems costing $250,000 or more were interesting marvels to be seen and displayed at equipment shows. Few graphic designers used the technology. Large type houses, newspapers, and major magazines were the market for this first generation of wysiwyg (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) display devices. The first computer product to be marketed as a graphic design tool would not be available for another five years. In 1985, the Macintosh breakthrough was not so much technological as it was economic. Affordability rapidly created a new and remarkably expanded level of interest. The designer’s experience with the computer was now not limited to demonstrations and exhibits of work done by engineers. Suddenly, graphic designers could actually use the machine to create their own images.”

However, Labuz also points out that even though these advancements in the actual hardware and software and its relative affordability, it would be years before the printing technology would catch up with what was being created on the computer screen. By the early 1990s, using a computer to design was still optional, however, a bothersome sense of change was soon becoming apparent within the design industry. Even the most resistant graphic designers found their handcrafted layouts being placed into large cameras and scanners to be captured in digital form. Tasks such as separating color and the application of a transparency effect were simplified by the technology. Individual images and photographs could be captured digitally and then scaled and reversed with a simple keyboard command, eliminating the need for Photostats and photo-mechanical transfers that required more hand-manipulation on a layout board. Rub-down lettering was replaced by a wide range of sometimes free and often inexpensive fonts. All of these factors were significant in the migration from traditional design production techniques to the practice of computer-generated graphic design.

As designers advanced design tools that allowed for endless creative manipulation, a gradual acceptance of the personal computer prevailed. Labuz stated ‘The computer is neutral. Like the T-square and the triangle, this machine is a tool that may be used poorly or well, responsibly or irresponsibly. Fortunately, the short history of the medium has already produced work of exceptional quality. Rapidly moving from infancy to adolescence, computer graphic design has matured as a medium in a remarkably short time.” A great deal of attention was now being placed on the look and feel of the design that was generated from these machines. Designers exploited the exactness and precision of the design software and were amazed in their individual ability to perform such complex operations without the assistance of a typographer or production assistant. Mastering advanced graphic design software became an exclusive practice that was reserved for the professionally trained. As computers made their presence in more homes and offices across the country, graphic designers were quite pleased with themselves in their abilities to outperform the average computer user. After all, they were the first to experiment with this new visual technology and push it to its limits. They were professionally trained in the practice of design and worked closely with the commercial printing industry, producing stunning visual products for both business and industry. They possessed true economic power and digital graphics was their area of expertise.

Natalia Ilyin said it best in her article Fabulous Us: Speaking the Language of Exclusion, which appeared in a 1994 issue of the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design. “… the language of design was based on exclusionary principles that we, as designers, all recognised. We went to school and learned and taught our clients what tools they needed to understand this language. We all agreed to use these principles, were welcome to the long house, had a corner on the market of knowledge, and paid the Con Ed bill. It was fabulous us and not-so-fabulous them, and it was our job to keep them realising that we knew more than they did.”What this group of professionals did not see coming was the development of their hard-earned principles being built into the software that was now slowly appearing on everyone’s desktop computer. As if overnight, desktop publishing stepped beyond being a practice of graphic professionals and became a general means for anyone wanting to express their personal style through visual communication.

The design profession’s response to this initial challenge by self-taught desktop publishers was to promote a new exclusive language that would be artistic in nature and move further away from the reliance of computer-generated design. The computer had in many ways made design too perfect and too clean. Every design element rested on some sort of a grid system that kept the composition neat and orderly. Now that professionals and novices were using the same tools, graphic designers made a conscious effort not to use the established palettes and special effects filters within the design application and relied on their own creative devices of imperfect type.

Frere-Jones clarified his view further by stating: “the ingredients of design are now available to everybody, even if the less obvious skills are not… To justify the costs of design commissions, the benefit must become obvious: the designer must provide what the secretary cannot” and others agreed. “Clean work is easy. Edgy, inclusive work is unintelligible to those who do not speak the language. Our exclusionary language is now a language of obfuscation, which clients pay money to understand. And they said a computer was just a tool.”

The flipside to a totally expressive design solution is to create one of restraint and precision. With a “modernist approach,” Frere-Jones suggested that graphic designers could also refer to themselves as “visual engineers” that specialise in research, analysis and implementation of the most effective means for communication. By posing as a “quasi scientist,” Frere-Jones contended that designers could flaunt the principles and evidence of their professional training and formal education. References to the pioneering designers of traditional graphic design form were introduced into work as a tribute and as a visual pun for other designers to admire and be amused. Design became self-authored as designers began exploring a more self-expressive approach of representation. Designers began designing for the approval and acceptance of other designers and the audiences they were paid to communicate messages to, as well as the clients whose products they were paid to present, somehow became lost in the equation. Content became secondary to form, and the message was not always clear, nor did it fundamentally or exclusively represent the client’s voice. As a result, clientele preferring a more cleaner and decipherable message looked to desktop publishers for a simple and more understandable format.

The relationship between technology and graphic design needs to be understood. Since technology is growing excessively fast, I picked a recent essay about the subject to get more relevant information. This essay bonces back and forth on the positive and negative effect on graphic design, including evidence to determine each points. Even though this essay focuses on how the impact of technology on graphic design, it doesn’t tackle the originality or authenticity of graphic work.

Graphic designers relied heavily on word-of-mouth for their works to become popular and to be seen by the public, it was close to impossible to grow an organic dedicated fanbase to follow your work, nowadays with the rise of the internet and social media, you can create a profile on numerous websites such as Behance, Instagram and Dribble, where not only you can post your 2D images, you can share animations, vlogs and interactive art with no limitations of size file or quality. “With a traditional paper portfolio, it is rarely possible to accommodate all our work, with a laptop we can take everything”. On one hand, this supports graphic designers and gives them an easy interaction hub for clients to come in. On the other hand, this displays that having an image and a following is a bigger priority than before, especially since more designer accounts are being created every day. This may encourage designers to be more active and post more, therefore might have to rush out work or even worse, plagiarise. The struggle of the graphic designers wasn’t explored enough, especially in a competitive aspect.

Away from social media, they explored other programs like, Photoshop, Illustrator, After effect where you can create piece of work faster and more efficiently than the traditional way. Specifically, with Adobe After effect, an average person has access to a high amount of tools that helps them create animation in a rapid time compared to classic Disney movies where they had to use traditional stocks cell where they have to draw on every single frame. This determines that technology is giving opportunities to artists to be creative without worrying on buying big equipment or having a big team. Furthermore, it helps to find talent much easier than before, especially after they upload their animation on social media. One of the first graphic designers to use technology on their work was April Greiman. She is also credited, along with early collaborator Jayme Odgers, with helping to import the European ‘New Wave’ design style to the US during the late 70s and early 80s. ‘Greiman was one of the first graphic designers make use of the powerful tools in a computer. He notes that Greiman did not view the computer as simply a functional tool but as something that had led her to experiment in a way that opened up new avenues of design.’ This describes the good side of technology, however, it doesn’t showcase the disadvantage of having so many tools and how it could affect the slight mistake of the human touch, moreover, it might not challenge the creative mind.

Today we are seeing an uprising against the over digitalized style work. We are seeing a rise in the popularity of traditional print-based media as designers are striving for the type of imperfection that was commonplace before the digital revolution. This can be seen today in many sources. Just one look at designs from today’s creative area gives you the opportunity to see an abundance of textures and overlays used to create the implied use of traditional media.

Upgrades and updates for the better. Buy a computer today and it will be dated technology in a couple of months or weeks. In the early 2000s people used to carry floppy disks along with them so they would be able to get their reports from their laptops onto computers. Now, you carry along a sixty gigabytes hard disk which stores almost all of your projects and personal documents. And if in some bizarre situation that amount of memory would not be enough, you can take your 160-gigabyte hard disk along. With the society depending on the technology, the development of it evolves continuously, mobile phones, computers or software, newer, better and faster versions are being developed because that is what we need. So the mass, or public, is basically being conditioned to need technology. Without it, we cannot function properly. In the future. It will develop into artificial intelligence, which is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Some of the activities computers with artificial intelligence are designed for include speech recognition, learning, and planning. Ai has already taken over mass production factories while also stealing numerous jobs, which brings up the question. Will Ai take over graphic design? There are already Ai websites and programs that can create websites layout and logos. This dissertation will start off by understanding the rise of technology in graphic design, followed by how graphic designers are adapting to technology today. Then explore Ai’s involvement in graphic design to investigate whenever we are at risk of being taken over.

Artificial intelligence is programmed to complete a certain task, you feed it with information and it will calculate the best possible outcome to your problem, but can it be authentic. Can Ai create original and authentic pieces of art or design? To fully answer this question, we need to recognize what we mean by authenticity in graphic design.