Graphic design is part of our daily lives as it is present in most everything around us. From humble things like chocolate bars to oversized billboards to the computer screen you’re looking at right now. It fills every waking moment of our day – in every piece of packaging and communication of your daily life. The truth is we have come to depend on the discipline(s) of graphic design to help shape our world. And the introduction of new technologies and software in the field of graphic design has helped Internet marketing agencies like us to create and fulfill graphic designs in a more time efficient and cost effective way.   

As an Internet marketing agency in Toronto, the disciplines of graphic design that we instill help to shape the creative and execution of our clients’ website. Let’s assume you have a message you want to communicate. You need to persuade or explain, showcase your products or sell something. The combination that includes your company logo, your copy, and visual elements that you place on a page is a form of visual communication called graphic design.

Graphic designers create, choose, and organize these elements – typography, images, and the so-called “white space” around them – to communicate a message. Graphic design informs, persuades, organizes, stimulates, locates, identifies, attracts attention and provides pleasure.

Graphic design is the discipline and the creative process that combines art and technology to communicate ideas. The graphic designer works with a variety of communications tools (like the Apple PowerBook I’m working on right now) in order to convey a message targeted to a particular audience. The main tools of a graphic designer are images and typography. And it’s up to the designer to place those elements in a way that it communicates the client message clearly.

Images in graphic design – Images, whether photographic, painted, drawn or graphically rendered in many different ways can be incredibly powerful and compelling tools of communication conveying not only information but also moods and emotions. Image-based design is employed when the graphic designer determines that, in a particular case, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Graphic design and type – Words are not just words as they are to a copywriter. The way words appear on a page is as important as their meaning and graphic designers are experts at presenting them in a visual form. It may seem simple as you look at the context of a web page, but there is a discipline to presenting content. Type size, type color, style of font, how and where the type is located, how many columns of copy and at what width and leading and so on and so on. Graphic designers evaluate the message and the audience for type-based design in order to make these kinds of decisions that affect the way the reader reacts to the content.

Combined images and type – Most often graphic designers combine a number of these elements when creating a message. Images, photographic or illustrative, are combined with logos and symbols along with type in order to complete their message. It’s the job of the graphic designer to establish what components and letterforms to use but to find the best balance between them. The graphic designers job is usually a collaborative effort. They work with the client to understand the content and the purpose of the message. Once a design concept is chosen, the graphic designer works with outside contributors such as illustrators, photographers and print or web specialists to create the final design product.