Archive for the ‘Content’ Category

GRAPHICS DESIGN & VISUAL COMMUNICATION

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Communication is the best and the only way to put out thoughts across. When there was no language people used to communicate by drawing pictures on the walls of the caves. These pictures were not only instrumental in their day to day life when they wanted to express their ideas, but at the same time these have been price less for the people who are trying to put things together to understand their history and culture.

There are many ways of communicating with each other – the written aids, the verbal talks and the Visual Communication as mentioned above. Depending upon what would suit the situation best, the mode of communication is picked. Like for example, commonly people would talk to say their head out. In case they are not face to face and they are using no aid like a telephone or like they could communicate through written means of communications like the letters. The idea of visual communication while we have a fully developed language is not digested by many people.

Visual Communication would include graphic designs primarily. As the mane suggests the idea is to have a visual, a picture that would help stating what you want to say. These are quite instrumental when you have a limited time window and there is too much to say and at the same time these could be more descriptive and simple to understand as compared to any other mode of communication. The visual communication could be aided by the other technological advancements to give a desired result. Like graphic designs – this is a perfect example of pictures used to communicate the idea and use of technology to enhance that visual communication. This is a very generic way of putting but graphic design is a complete field in itself.

As the scope of visual communication is increasing the potential and the spectrum for the graphic designers are also increasing. There are so many tools that they use for visual communication and there are many in the pipe line to be developed.

The need for graphic designs has increased extensively all across the globe especially, from the time when we have started to swear by globalization. These days the graphical designs are cutting the language barriers all across the world. If you look at the travel industry – it primarily involves crossing the boundaries and visiting various places. The language and the culture of these places would definitely be not the same as that of the traveller. Hence, for understanding the roots and other important instructions at least these graphic designs could be used. The important road signs, the hospital and energy signs etch all would come under the visual communication. Clearly, the visual communication frees the communicator from the boundaries of language and culture.

In fact the visual communication is quite evident even if you are in the same country or amongst the people who speak the same language as you do. In case you need to send a message across to the masses informing them regarding the same – visual communication is the best to execute it. All you need to do is to put together a banner or like that would be visible and could communicate your thoughts across.

There is no sect that would not get benefits of using visual communication in some way or the other. Most commonly you would see graphic representations in advertisements, magazines, web designs and product packaging. Through this there is a strong visual communication message that could be sent across. The elements like colours and the other attractive attributes that are used in graphics would make the visual communication even stronger. The idea is that when someone looks at the same he or she should be able to clearly interpret what the message sender is willing to communicate through the picture.

The importance visual communication in the business world is simply indispensable. In fact there would be no one facet of business that could do without the graphic design or visual communication of any other kind. Ways in which visual communication contribute to the business world is as below –

  • · Visual communication is integral while generating processional images like graph, curves and other pie charts & like. Rather than stating the profits and cost variables with the others in an essay for a chart or a graphical representation would send a clear message across, filtering all the less important information. This could be understood as translating the bare figures into a mode of visual communication which enables ease of understanding.
  • · Another way of using visual communication in the business world would be communicating the long lasting business strategies very clearly. As that this particular point of time the strategy is a mere thought that needs to be communicated to others. Only once that thought is clearly understood, then only people could work around the details of the same and then get it to an executable level.
  • · These graphics would be very helpful in visual communicating of the stance and performance of the company. Rather than saying that it has been growing, an upward rising graph with the name of the company would be enough to say the story.

Overall, the use of visual communication in business is to make the communication in terms of figures more effective and impressive. These would have a ready impact on the existing and the potential clients for your business.

Last but not the least the creativity which is involved in visual communication would make this mode more effective. When we talk about visual communication we are not saying that the picture or the graphical design that we have should be a picture perfect image. One should be able to target that thought that he is trying to communicate across through the graphic or a picture that he needs to send across to the receiver. Or else no matter how beautiful or technical a graphic design be – it is worthless.

All around the world graphic designs are been accepted as the most convenient and impactful mode of visual communication.

The Design Industry And Machines

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Machines and their developing technology are now used so frequently in the design industry I believe there will come a time in the near future where the machine is the only tool used in design, and humans may not even be needed anymore to help with the design process. As newer and more advanced programmes are introduced more artists and designers are using them as their ‘tool’, this is also because a computer, colour printer, scanner, modem and design package can cost as little as £1,500, and the majority of artists take advantage of this and the creative possibilities it can offer.

Gallery owners, they people who are commissioned to sell design/artwork are uncertain whether it is right to sell computer-generated work, they question if it is ethically correct to sell computer-generated work as fine art. The question is will technology become so clever that it can design everything itself, or for the final design to be successful does the computer also be able to think – like a human. “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.” Donna Haraway’s interpretation of our time to come and that we as humans will develop to become part of the world of technology ourselves.

Will there become a stage where computer can also think? Research has already been done to determine whether or not a computer can ‘think’, part of this research was known as the “Turing test” provided by Alan Turing, he blinded folded a group of humans and told them to ask questions, these questions were then answered by either a computer or a human being and if the human could not distinguish the difference between a answer from a human or a computer then the machine was showing intelligent known as thinking.                                                                                                 

Graphic Images And TIFF Files

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

Graphic images do not normally have a continuous tone unless a gradient has been used within the graphic. Graphics are drawings are not like photos plus they usually use few colours, less than 16 colours in the whole image. In a colour graphic cartoon, a particular area of colour will use one shade, where as in a photograph there may be numerous shades of one colour.

A map is produced using graphics and only uses 4 – 5 map colours plus 1 – 2 colours of text and then blue water and white paper, so these types of graphics use less than 16 colours, Graphics like this are ideal for Indexed Colour.

The TIFF file format is the best image file to use when best quality is required, and this is why the TIFF is common in professional and commercial printing environments. High Quality large JPG images are also good too, but they can be ruined if they are made too small. The 2D digital image is split into two parts, images know as ‘bitmapped’ are usually used in image making programmes such as Photoshop or painting packages, bitmap images are usually made up of rectangle picture elements known as pixels and each pixel is a colour, if the image is enlarged you can see these pixels and the image appears jagged, this can be improved by increasing the number of pixels per inch, known as a higher resolution image.

The other part is known as a ‘vector’ image and these are used in drawing and illustration programmes like Adobe Illustrator, a vector image is made up using lines and shapes, if the vector image is enlarged the quality will not degrade and the smoothness of the final image is only determined by the output device used to print the image.

Multiplying Designs And Images Digitally

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

Before machines became so advanced and mechanical reproduction was introduced, duplicates of art works high in demand were made by being copied by hand, the artists would sometimes create numerous versions of a painting or made very similar replicas, but the usual occurrence would be that students, apprentices or assistants produced the copies.

Handmade copies were using just as sort after as the original, but there were obvious drawbacks to this technique being the artist would have to pay the person who produced the copies a good wage, so it was expensive, time – consuming and involved hard labour. And still there is only a few of the copies made and they were never exact but usually just a translation or an interpretation of the original.

The need to multiply an image or a design has become more popular as the design world and industry has developed, it is hard to believe that people would actually sit and reproduce the same thing over and over by hand now we are living in a world full of high quality colour printers and photocopiers, we take for granted the easy method of reproduction, you can scan a piece of work into a computer and print it 1,000 times over in a matter of a few minutes.

This also is a example of how the digital era is making us as human creatives lazy, and the appreciation of an original piece of artwork or design is becoming almost unheard of due the fact artwork is repeatedly reprinted in art books, on canvas and even onto cups and mouse mats, all these factors result in loosing the ‘special’ element of seeing the artwork. 

Clear Navigation

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Most user interactyions with Web pages involve navigating hypertext links between documents.  The main interface problem in websites is the lack of sense of where you are within the local organisation of information. 

Clear, consistant icons, graphic identity schemes and graphic or text based information and summary screens can give the user confidence that they can find what they are looking for without wasting their time.

The user should always be able to return easily to your home page and to other major navigation points in the site.  These basic links should be present and in consistenet locations on every page.  Graphic buttons will provide basic navigation links and create a graphic identity that tells users they are within the site domain.