My Graphic Design Experience
How Graphic Design has developed during my 33 years experience in the design industry
I started learning Graphic Design back in 1990, at the age of 16, where I studied for a Graphic Design & Production Skills course at Bedford College.
Digital Design did not exist back then, there was not even a computer available for students to use. Computers in schools and colleges, were only used for teaching word processing and there was a class room specifically used for this.
In Graphic Design lessons, we used drawing boards, marker pens, pencils, paint and rulers to create Print Documents by hand including Menu’s, Book Covers & Typography.
My first full-time job as an Office Junior in the mid 1990s involved covering the office reception desk during lunch staff breaks, the reception computer had software on it called Microsoft Paint. I remember really enjoying using it and drawing pictures and words with pixels.
It wasn’t until many years later that I had a computer of my own. I studied Access Art, Design & Media in 2001 - 2002 and bought a second hand iMac G3, I installed Quark Express desktop publishing software, to create page layouts and designs until Adobe Creative Suite became available in 2002, whilst I was studying BA (hons) Communication Design in 2002 - 2005. All Adobe programs started to work together. I used dreamweaver to create websites and web pages, flash to create website banners, Indesign for print, Illustrator to create logos, icons and patterns and photoshop to edit photographs. It took a long time to remove the background from an image then!
Technology began to evolve fast and as a designer, I had to keep up to date with design trends and new technologies. More and more devices started to appear which meant more and more testing and screen sizes got smaller and smaller.
Mobile phones became a core part of both personal and working life and Social Media became popular between 2003 and 2007, MySpace, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook all became household names.
A Graphic Designer's role now included designing for digital devices too, from desktop computers and laptops to smartphones and tablets, and people were becoming more tech-savvy all the time.
As a result, design has become clean and minimalistic, which allowed users to navigate sites more easily on a wide range of devices. User experience is at the top of the list for web design and many people now create their own website's using builder platforms. There are tutorials available for anyone to learn how to build their own website using Youtube and Social Media sites.
Most people today have a website and there is a heavy importance on brand marketing and analytics to get to the top of Google's Search Results Pages. (SERPs) Today, brand marketing is 24 hours per day, not just 9 - 5 and this reaches a much larger audience than print design alone ever could.
But, with all the development in print and digital design over the years, the fundementals of giving expressive form and clarity of content to communicate a message has stayed the same.
