Graphic Design is a commercial art form of selecting and arranging visual elements (typography, images, symbols, colors) to communicate ideas for a purpose (convey information or a message to an audience).

It is a collaborative discipline: writers produce words and photographers and illustrators create images that the designer combines to complete the visual message.

A graphic designer needs to understand how people respond to color, type, imagery, etc. This is key to getting the message across. In order for us to respond to the concept, it is not enough for the image to be appropriate or beautiful – the picture and elements must stand for something and they must be presented in a new or inventive relationship.

Expand your vocabulary to more than just words. Here are some concepts on how you express your ideas in out of the ordinary ways:

• Metaphors: figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (ex: swimming in money)
• Puns: the usually humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more of its meanings or the meaning of another word similar in sound (ex: put it on my bill, said the duck)
• Irony: the use of words to express something other than the literal meaning, usually the exact opposite (ex: calling a linebacker “tiny”)
• Metonymy: the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (ex: calling an business executive a “suit”)

Over the long haul of a designer’s career, one should continually research the history of the profession; learn who the innovators were and what they did that was innovative. How did they push the boundaries of the current technologies? Look at the boundaries of your current technologies and by taking a hint from the past try to recreate their thinking to find ways to push the current limits.

A short list of the prominent graphic designers include: Alexy Brodovitch, David Carson, Herb Lubalin, Ivan Chermayeff and Thomas Geismar, Lester Beall, Massimo and Lella Vignelli, Milton Glaser & Seymour Chwast, Neville Brody, Paul Rand, Paula Scher, Piet Zwart, Rudy Vanderlans and Zuzana Licko, Saul Bass, Tibor Kalman.

Develop your own voice as a designer.

Take risks.