People, who study law, later call themselves lawyers. Those who study medicine will call themselves doctors and those who study art are artists. Some will specialise and some may create new jobs and titles, but job titles can be easily categorised in most cases. People who want to become graphic designers these days will mostly study ‚communication design, but how they are going to call themselves later is wide ranging. Numerous professional tags ranging from ‚'atelier for typography and graphic design' to 'visual communication' can be found. Some of these distinctions are helpful in pinpointing the nature of the job. For example, 'web design' is something different to 'editorial design'. But it can get confusing with tags such as 'agency for design and communication'. What does communication indicate here? Most people will probably figure out that this does not refer to a phone company selling communication systems. But what does the term communication then really stands for? Is this an agency also writing texts for image brochures or press releases? Or does it communicate the design? Or does communication here stand for the communication of colours and shapes? It gets even more obscure with professional tags such as ‘multitasking design practice’ or 'multi-disciplinary design network'. Even if that actually describes what the agency is doing, very few people will understand the services offered by the agency. The word 'multi' indicates that more than one service is on offer. It also specifies that solely writing graphic design is not enough for the job description. Why is doing great graphic design not enough? This ambiguity can also be found sometimes in the term ‘design consultancy’. If the company is actually focusing on advice on designing, the term is self-covering. However, if the company is focussing on creating design solutions, then isn’t it then automatically also giving advice on taking this solution? Then what is the need for underlining it with a term borrowed from the business world? If one is involved in graphic design, then why not simply call it graphic design?
Over the years, graphic designers were known by many designations, which kept on changing with the times and context. For example, in the beginning of the 20th century, when advertising started to emerge as a separate discipline, the tag ‘commercial artist’ was used. The job was not highly respected and the graphic designer was seen as an artist using his or her know-how for selling things. At the famous Bauhaus school in Germany, the designer was called a ‘Formgeber’ (a person who ‘gives form’ to something). Here it was all about relating the authentic form to the content. The term ‘graphic design’ was first used in 1922 by William Addison Dwiggins in his book ‘New Kind of Printing Calls for New Design’. He used the term to describe his various activities in printed communications, such as book design, illustration, typography, lettering and calligraphy. The term did not achieve widespread usage until after the Second World War. Graphic design successfully established itself as an artistic profession during this period. Since the 1990s, the discipline got more general acceptance and graphic designers were hired to address social and political issues. Otl Aicher, the co-founder of the ‘Hochschule für Gestaltung’ in Ulm coined the term ‘visual communication’ to club all specialisations under a single term. This term is still on vogue today and refers to specialisations such as illustration, typography, interactive design, web design, package design, information design, etc. But aren’t all of these graphic design? Then why not calling it graphic design?
© Anna Craemer