Novice and professional graphic designers, we are aware that you know
basic principles of graphic philosophy. But then, as workers of art – though digital and graphic art already borders in commercial arts, there’s no harm in continuously improving our craft through constant study and practice, is there? Really great graphic designers I know have come to their status because of painstaking application and study of their past works.We’ll review theoretical concepts of graphics and graphic forms as a foundation on how we have to go about our graphic designs. To begin with, a graphic form is shape that embodies a certain idea. We can take a tree and use it as an example. How many ways can we depict a tree? We can depict by a photo of a tree, or silhouette of a tree, or even its outline. By having these forms that represent a tree, we are therefore conveying idea of a tree.
A word of caution, though, effectiveness of which idea is communicated depends upon many levels of context.
The abstraction of an idea into a flat space, to make it a graphic form, is an integral part of Graphic Design. Usually, goal is to communicate idea as clearly as possible. So why not depict apple as close to reality as possible with a photo? This clearly depicts an apple and leaves no room for misinterpretation. So why not use photos of everything?
The idea is usually not as simple as just an apple. The graphic form is merely a component of an entire design. In a design of a poster for example, existence of multiple forms and large amounts of text can compete with one another for reader’s attention. To increase readability, graphic forms are usually simplified into basic shapes, and flattened into a limited amount of color. They are made to work with type more harmoniously and further refined to convey layers of information with clarity.
