What design isn’t

What is graphic design really? I recently asked a client this during a negotiation session on our rates. I asked him that by some freak accident if the world lost all it’s graphic design and advertising professionals overnight how badly would world economy be hit?

On the face of the traditional accepted view of graphic design you’d have to agree that nothing much would change on the surface. It’s not like brand and product managers are illiterate or cannot make basic graphical decisions on branding. So you can still expect packaging, hoardings and newspaper advertisements aplenty, Just not as aesthetically pleasing, perhaps. So it seems as though a graphic designer’s job is merely value addition to a process that can easily run without one. Many people seeking graphic design services certainly seem to think so. I’ve seen this for myself way too often. You would not hop from one mutual fund to another without checking antecedents. The same goes for banking, surgery, cruises or haircuts. All these are services and as is already well known the service is only as good as the service provider. Except this does not seem to hold good in graphic design. Some people hop from one design house to another as though there were no difference in the final output.

This perception of design is entirely wrong and mostly it is the designers who are to be blamed. Next, the art colleges.

In India design is generally related to art and aesthetics, other than at certain specialist design institutes across the country. In the late 50’s several art institutions began offering ‘applied art’ courses which continues to the present day, except it’s now posturing as advertising. The concept of applying the arts to commercial areas is not new. Artists were constantly required for making anything from posters to painting hoardings. While this certainly can be applied to what our modern understanding of branding and advertising is, aesthetics is just a tiny part of the picture. The issue is not in Applied Art in general, but in who is doing the application, and to what effect.

Design itself is a much larger part of the overall system. The very term itself signifies the difference between art, even applied art.

Art is subjective to the person creating it, design is an objective view towards solving a defined problem.

The Art process is experiential, the design process is based on acquired and applied knowledge

Art belongs to the mystical experience, design can be explained in scientific terms

By merely pointing out to the finished product which can only be appreciated in terms of it’s surfacial qualities, art colleges have bred designers who are just good artists. Someone who can draw good pictures or can rig decent compositions and layouts is not a designer! One is still an artist. Not that this is lesser in any way or wrong, it’s just that he or she is in the wrong line of work.

A real honest to goodness designer is worried less about the aesthetics and more about problem solving. Good design has always been judged by how well it is recieved by the market and how practical it is to use. The same applies to graphic design as well. Designers then, are much more than artists in this respect. They also have to study behavioural science, business, systems level thinking and organisation. The bigger picture is far more important. An objective view because the design is made to communicate to the masses, as opposed to Art’s subjective view designed to communicate individually.