Graphic Design Essentials

With Adobe Software

Joyce Walsh

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781350075047
• eBook ISBN: 9781350075061
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Desktop Applications

Learning by doing is the best way to get to grips with new ideas, and graphic design is no different. Weaving together creative strategies and design principles with step-by-step Adobe software guidance, this unique book helps you to immediately put into practice the concepts as you're learning them so they become second nature. Covering all the introductory topics a designer needs to know – from working with colour and layout, to editing images and designing apps – this fully updated edition of the hugely popular Graphic Design Essentials includes plenty of hands-on instruction and real-life examples to give you a thorough grounding in the fundamentals. This new edition includes: - Coverage of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign
- Examples of designs from the UK, US, Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, China, the Middle East and Australia
- Smaller supporting activities alongside major project exercises
- New design formats, including apps and infographics
- Downloadable resources to use within the software instruction

Introduction

Lucien Bernhard, Priester matches poster, 1905

This Priester matches poster was considered a work of genius and made Lucien Bernhard famous. While a struggling young artist in Berlin, he won a poster contest with this radically concise design. His poster successfully reduced the style of commercial communication from complex lithographs (Art Nouveau posters) to one word and two matches. Bernhard’s bold colors make the visually simple message powerful. He repeated his formula—flat background color, product name, and simple image—for over twenty years. His designs moved graphic communications forward and continue to inspire new designers to communicate with simplified form and bold colors.

Throughout this book you’ll notice several historic examples that have helped shape graphic design over the past 120 years. These “hero” designers expressed their passion for type, image, color, and layout in their works. I hope they inspire you as you develop your skills in design.

Graphic Design is Everywhere

Look around and you’ll see that graphic design is everywhere. It’s the most pervasive art form in our society. And when it’s good, it’s powerful. Graphic design influences our purchases with distinctive branding, clever packaging, and persuasive advertising. It also engages us and enhances our comprehension of text in websites, apps, magazines, and books.

Would you like to produce powerful work such as that shown on this page? This book will teach you how to analyze designs to understand their underlying strategies. It will provide guidelines for successfully choosing and using colors, typefaces, images, and layouts. And it will teach you software skills with design exercises, so you can create your own influential graphic designs in all forms, both print and digital, from package designs to smart watch displays.

Design Concepts

+ Examples

+ Analysis

+ Software Skills

+ Projects

We’ll use the formula above throughout the book. Each chapter provides explanations of design concepts, along with examples and analysis that reinforce this knowledge. This information is complemented with instruction in Adobe Creative Cloud software. The software skills are demonstrated with engaging exercises that will reinforce your understanding of design fundamentals. Projects provide you with opportunities for independent creative development using professional design software.

Adobe Creative Cloud

The Adobe Creative Cloud includes industry-standard software: Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Photoshop is the leading professional software used to optimize photographic and complex images. Illustrator is used to draw on the computer and for single-page layout for print and screen. InDesign is multiple-page layout software and is used to organize designs prior to sending jobs to print shops or developers for digital products. These three Adobe products share a similar interface that facilitates the beginner’s ability to use the software.

A reassuring consideration: in this book software skills are built incrementally. Going through the chapters sequentially, you are provided with software instruction to perform each exercise. The software sections will advance your skills progressively. And the exercises reinforce design concepts, so you’ll build design capability along with technical facility.

As you develop these skills, your confidence will grow. You will develop the ability to produce the ideas you have in your imagination. If you already know a bit of Photoshop or other programs, doing the exercises anyway will reinforce the design concepts and build your software skills to a professional level. In the later chapters, you will, as most designers do, combine your skills in all three programs to produce designs. Ready? Let’s go!

Functional Fine Art

Designs of words and images are everywhere, and when done well, they’re considered functional fine art. The goal of most graphic design is to communicate, but visual appeal can be subjective: what you like may differ from what another person likes. Regardless of style, good design enhances our lives, while bad design impedes communication and comprehension.

Think about the graphic designs you’ve seen today. The examples on these pages represent the range we encounter daily: packaging, signs, logos, magazines, websites, and apps. Logos appear everywhere, from coffee cups to the tops of buildings, and act as stamps of quality and cost. Signs direct us to new locations, saving time or causing more steps. Advertisements, in print or flashing at you on the internet, can affect our purchases, whether we think we want a product or not. Magazines are designed to inform and influence readers.

Graphic designs facilitate our ability to get the information we need, yet we’ve all experienced poorly organ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Elements of Design
• 3 Typography
• 4 Images
• 5 Layouts
• 6 Logos
• 7 Visual Themes
• 8 Appendix
• Keyboard Shortcuts – Mac Keystrokes
• Keyboard Shortcuts – PC Keystrokes
• Glossary
• Credits
• Color Connotations
• Bibliography and Recommended Readings
• Index
• Acknowledgments