History of Graphic Design – Final Project & Reflection

History of Graphic Design – Final Project

It’s a bit hard to believe that my time in this class, the History of Graphic Design is nearly over. This, my final project, is a reflection on what I’ve learned in the class and how it has affected me as a graphic design student. Looking back, I’m amazed we covered so much ground, and am appreciative for what I learned about graphic design, its origins and history and how it has completely changed me and how I see the world around me. This is my last post for the class, and if it is the first time you've been to my blog, welcome, and please enjoy the ten posts below this reflection. I hope you'll enjoy them and find them informative and inspiring.

I didn’t know what to expect ten weeks ago when I started this course – I can say that I was intimidated with the amount of reading and researching we were going to encounter and I was concerned that maybe I wouldn’t “get it” and would struggle to keep up in the class.  I also had never blogged before and felt that portion of our work would be challenging in its own regard.

I can see my hesitation when I re-read my first few blog posts. I wasn’t sure what to say, how my peers would respond or if anyone would even read my work. I struggled to find interesting things to write my field journal on, and often stayed up late at night re-reading and researching to find that one piece of our module that resonated “me” and that I could write on with confidence.  That’s when I realized I had it all wrong.

You see, I was struggling those first few weeks to find a piece of myself in the lessons. Something I could relate to. What I wasn’t expecting or prepared for was the concept that graphic design (and its history) is a part of my daily life. It’s a huge part of the world I live in, and these field journals weren’t about me finding something I was already familiar with to write about, but instead opening my eyes to what I wasn’t knowledgeable about, new ideas and concepts, and seeing all that was around me.  It meant really applying the lessons, thoughts, movements and theories to almost everything I encountered. (I will never stand in line at Starbucks the same way again – All the typography, designs, colors – it’s mesmerizing now!) Writing what I felt was a good field journal meant diving head first into topics I knew little or nothing about and taking what I learned from our textbook and using it as a foundation and then turning that into an interesting, creative topic that I seemed to enjoy as much as my fellow students did.

In these last few weeks I found my textbook to be a gateway into entire new worlds of graphic design that I did not know existed.  I went from thinking about petroglyphs and reading simple Wikipedia articles to researching design firms, watching videos on title designs and viewing thousands upon thousands of images of graphic designs from petroglyphs and hieroglyphics to photoshopped digital images. Every piece was important, informational and influenced how I see the world now. 

My last field journal (from last week) was on title design, which I now am pretty mesmerized by and am considering as a future career. And don’t even get me started on infographics – my entire office thinks I’m crazy now, after seeing me admire a new infographic poster that arrived. I can’t stop talking about it with my coworkers – after our reading and my research for my field journal, I find infographics to be quite fun and interesting, and my poor coworkers just don’t understand my fascination.

And as I found my voice through my field journals, I found that my peers did too. Having positive feedback on my field journals from my fellow students and my teacher pushed me further. It gave me confidence that I was really learning and opening up to a new way of thinking about the world around me. Having the opportunity to read other students journals also opened new doors – there were many weeks where I read someone’s field journal and had an “a-ha!” moment. Seeing things through someone else’s eyes and thoughts frequently drove home ideas that I may have missed in my reading. I am now very appreciative of the way this class was formatted for us, so that we can improve as students not only through our own work, but also through each other’s.

“Flipping from front to back, I think it's easy to see the progression of the images starting from the invention of writing on tablets and scrolls, to printing, the invention and use of photography in design and contemporary designs, including well know works of art and even company logos. I can certainly see the influences modernization and the Industrial Revolution had on advancements in design - both in the technology available to create the designs themselves (and print them), as well as the influence these movements had on culture and the audiences they were created for.”

I wrote that paragraph about our textbook in my first blog post. I still think it’s quite accurate, but now I feel like I have a much better understanding of the subject and would remove the words “easy to see”.  While I think it’s not hard to appreciate the advancement of both civilization and design through the images alone, the reading and research helped me understand how we progressed as a culture and makes me appreciate modern graphic design that much more. I now can value and understand the limitations that inhibited the advancement graphic design (like politics, finance , culture and war), what innovations moved them forward and can appreciate how artists, architects, photographers, illustrators, editors and designers worked to meet the needs of their time.

Our society today is very much about instant access to information and graphic design and designers work hard to help fulfill that need. It makes me wonder where we, as a society, are headed next. Technology continues to advance and while I don’t know what the future holds for designers, I do know that it is a world I want to be a part of. Having taken this class, I feel like a much stronger graphic design student. My creativity has blossomed, and was certainly spurred by learning about great artists and designers like Wassily Kandinksy, Charles S. Anderson and Muriel Cooper. I appreciate so much more of the world around me, it’s history and origins, and am seeing things with fresh eyes. I feel more self confident now, and worry less about “not getting it”. After all, graphic design, like society, continues to evolve. I know I will too.