Graphic designs is the art and profession of using visual compositions to solve problems and communicate ideas through typography, imagery, color and form. While illustration focuses on creative interpretation, graphic design is all about communication with its target audience. Both graphic design and illustration have their own set of techniques, mediums and artistic goals. It’s easiest to think of graphic design for its commercial motivation, while illustration takes the fine art route.
Graphic design’s ability to deliver explicit messages makes it a major force in the modern world: it is embedded in the commercial infrastructure. Illustration, on the other hand, with its woolly ambiguity and its allusive ability to convey feeling and emotion, makes it too dangerous to be allowed to enter the corporate bloodstream.
Graphic designers hold onto their anonymity more so than illustrators, as their focus is in communicating someone else’s ideas through classic design elements. Illustrators are often sought out based on their personal aesthetic and artistic skill. NioSpace Illustrations are a visual way to portray or illustrate a written text. They might help explain an idea or tell a story or provide decoration. They come in many forms both traditional and digital.
The types of graphic design we embark on are wide ranging in both the print and digital worlds. Posters, fliers, business cards, packaging, billboards, and logos are a few examples of predominantly physical print works, while email marketing and web design dominate the digital landscape. Graphic design often begins with visual identity, a type of design that communicates a brand’s personality, story and emotion through logos, typography, color palettes, images, and style guidelines to ensure consistency through all other designs. Marketing has traditionally been focused on print materials, like flyers, magazine and newspaper ads. Publication designers produce layouts, hand-pick typography and arrange artwork for long-form projects, like books, newspapers, magazines and catalogs. Packaging designers communicate directly to consumers through the physical products. Environmental design unites design and architecture to create engaging spaces through signage, murals and exhibition displays.
Graphic illustration takes characteristics from both graphic design and classic illustration and combines them. While graphic design puts more emphasis on communication, and illustration leans more into fine art, graphic illustration is what happens when we marry both together. It’s the best of both worlds.
Graphic illustration applies the classic design principles of color, form, shapes, and layouts to organize and showcase original artwork.
