Watford, United Kingdom

Art and Design (Graphic Design)

Table of contents

Art and Design (Graphic Design) at West Herts College

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: arts
University website: www.westherts.ac.uk
Higher National Diploma (HND)

Definitions and quotes

Art
Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art.
Design
Design is the creation of a plan or convention for the construction of an object, system or measurable human interaction (as in architectural blueprints, engineering drawings, business processes, circuit diagrams, and sewing patterns). Design has different connotations in different fields (see design disciplines below). In some cases, the direct construction of an object (as in pottery, engineering, management, coding, and graphic design) is also considered to use design thinking.
Graphic Design
Graphic design is the process of visual communication and problem-solving using one or more of typography, photography and illustration. The field is considered a subset of visual communication and communication design, but sometimes the term "graphic design" is used synonymously. Graphic designers create and combine symbols, images and text to form visual representations of ideas and messages. They use typography, visual arts and page layout techniques to create visual compositions. Common uses of graphic design include corporate design (logos and branding), editorial design (magazines, newspapers and books), wayfinding or environmental design, advertising, web design, communication design, product packaging and signage.
Art
I am willing to let it rest on the determination of every reader, whether the pleasure which he has received from these effects of calm and luminous distance be not the most singular and memorable of which he has been conscious... It is not then by nobler form, it is not by positiveness of hue, it is not by intensity of light... that this strange distant space possesses its attractive power. But there is one thing that it has, or suggests, which no other object of sight suggests in equal degree, and that is—Infinity. ...No work of any art, in which this expression of infinity is possible, can be perfect or supremely elevated, without it.
John Ruskin, Modern Painters (1860) Vol. 2, Ch. V
Art
The Black Artist's role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it. His role is to report and reflect so precisely the nature of the society, and of himself, in that society, that other men will be moved by the exactness of his rendering, and if they are black men, grow strong through this moving, having seen their own strength, and weakness, and if they are white men, tremble, curse, and go mad, because they will be drenched with the filth of their evil.
Amiri Baraka, Negro Digest, vol. 14, no. 6 (April 1965), p. 65
Design
Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself.
Donald Norman (2002), The Design of Everyday Things, Introduction to the 2002 Edition
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