Articles about design

	What Is Graphic Design? Graphic design is often associated with images. Billboards and magazine ads show us that designers can speak volumes without using the written word. And yet, graphic design is not just about creating powerful picturesthat's what artists, photographers, and illustrators do. It's about communication. In fact, "visual communication" is the most accurate way to describe the purpose of graphic design.

	Defining Graphic Design What are some of the defining characteristics of graphic design? There's a lot more to design than the creative process. Let's begin by exploring its role in the world of business.

	Elements of Design Every design we've looked at so far exhibits a skill in handling four elements: imagery, color, typography, and composition. Now we'll explore some basic principles for each area.

	Critique the Design In this project, you'll develop your critiquing skills by comparing and contrasting two excellent professional designs. Learning to evaluate how and why a design works (or doesn't work) is a critical step in any designer's development. This chapter has given you a foundation in essential aspects of graphic design work and the roles of imagery, color, typography, and composition. This written assignment will challenge you to assess how these elements are handled by the pros.

	Photoshop Essentials Adobe Photoshop, the professional painting and photo-retouching tool, is fast becoming a cultural icon. The product is now a household word and even a verb: "Let me Photoshop it to fix the color" or "Why did you Photoshop Donald Trump's head on Grandma's body?"

	Photoshop and Graphic Design Adobe Photoshop is all about image manipulationstarting with raw photographic material (or even from scratch) and creating something unique. Artists often use Photoshop as a sort of digital brush that can be used for photo-realistic imagesimages that look real but aren'tor fantastic, surreal digital effects.

	Editing and Organizing Images In this section, we'll work on the essentials of Photoshopthe ability to organize artwork into layers, to select parts of an image for editing, to use silhouettes and masks, and to add and format text. This will build a foundation for later work. Basic ads and posters (good ones, too) can be created using just these tools.

	Chapter 3. Illustrator Essentials Designers starting out know Adobe Illustrator as "that program for designing logos," but it's capable of so much more: ads, illustrations, page layouts, and Web graphics, to name just a few applications. It's the industry-standard application for vector graphics.

	Illustrator and Graphic Design Adobe Illustrator started as a simple drawing program intended to automate technical drawing tasks. Today? Illustrator has come a long way, baby. Its raison d'être is still illustration, the creation of line art. But along the way, its developers have added in a host of features that make it sophisticated and flexible enough for a range of applications.

	Creating Vector Art In this section, we'll work on the essentials of Illustratorthe ability to use the drawing tools; select and arrange your artwork; work with strokes, fills, color, and type; and utilize some basic effects. If you're new to Illustrator, that's a lot to cover, but it will provide a foundation for further study. As you'll discover in this chapter's project, a lot of creative work can be done using just these tools.