Graphic Design is my… Passion?

My take on graphic design and typography trends today, and how they've evolved from the 2000s.

You can tell when a big boss randomly demanded a branding / graphics refresh, but allowed a team of inexperienced designers to create it (looking at you, Question Time).

Graphic design is an art in which people are quick to recognise when it's done right or wrong, but don't seem to appreciate it either way. People are very critical to other graphic design work, but not their own. They don't recognise the flaws in their design, unless they've been trained to do so.

It's a specific craft. Many designers don't understand why their work, or someone else's work isn't very good, but with art, it tends to be more obvious. Someone might call a drawing of a face with inaccurate proportions 'bad', but take no notice when a corporate memo has been written in Comic Sans.

It's pretty frustrating when you're really proud of a design, and people just say 'oh that's cool'. There's a lack of understanding about the skill and thought that goes into design. It's very similar to art, but it's also very different. A logo serves a purpose. It doesn't have to look cool or make an impact, but it needs to look professional and it should be clear what service the logo is providing. Typography art, which falls under design and graphic design, is more of an art form, but the skill is still misunderstood!

On Instagram, I saw an awareness post that had Canva written all over it (not literally). It had an earthy colour pallet comprised of various shades of brown, three different typefaces, and corporate looking images of people-y characters (not quite Allegria, more like a more realistic, but still uncanny illustration of a person).

This post wasn't as bad as using pure primary and secondary hues, using Comic Sans or Papyrus, fake PNGs, but it still wasn't 'it'. There wasn't much going on, not very exciting or inviting, nothing to draw you in. It didn't even look 'relaxing' like it was probably supposed to. It just looked boring.

After reading the book 'Just My Type' by Simon Garfield, where he talked about the dawn of Microsoft Office, and how it birthed 'Home Publishing', I realised that there was a new variant of home publishing, Canva. Although useful, and a tool I use to create quick posters or invitations, Canva has spawned the new era of home publishing. Instead of the likes of PowerPoint bake sale posters and Word school newsletters, as Garfield also touches on, it's now Canva that is trailblazing the space, conjuring the image of awareness posts and small business branding. Since Office, society has developed in design, taste has gotten better, but the average person, the account admin, small business owner, 'thank you note for their birthday party' creator still doesn't understand the fundamental do's and don'ts of design.

It makes sense. Design is not a life skill that is essential to be mastered. As long as you're communicating clearly, that's all you need. But design is like communicating in a pretty, illustrated way. How do you explain to someone that you can't warp text and expect the composition to look professional? How do you explain colour schemes?

I look back on designs I did a few weeks ago, never mind a few years ago, and think 'I can't tell if this is actually good or not' or, 'Oh my, how did I let myself make this!' So I'm not the governing body on good design. There is no 'shade' towards people who happen to miss the mark with design. It doesn't matter unless you're a professional designer, but I wonder why the rules of design are left 'un-grasped' and unappreciated!

References:

Garfield, A. Just My Type