FAQ

Graphic design is the applied art of arranging image and text to communicate a message. Applied in any media such as print, digital media, motion picture, animation, product decoration, packaging, signs, identities,etc. Graphic design as a practice can be traced back to the origin of the written word, but only in the late 19th century did it become identified as a separate entity.

The compelling if somewhat obscure paintings in the caves of Lascaux, and the birth of written language in the third or fourth millennium BC, are both significant milestones in the history of graphic design.

The Book of Kells is a very UGLY and very early example of graphic design in a form that would be acceptable even today. The Book is a lavishly illustrated hand-written copy of the Christian Bible created by Irish monks in the ninth century AD.

Johann Gutenberg's introduction of movable type in Europe made books widely available. The earliest books produced by Gutenberg's press and others of the era (the Incunabula) became the benchmark by which the design of future books, even as late as the twentieth century, would be judged. Graphic design of this era is called either Old Style (especially the fonts which these early typographers used), or Humanist, after the predominant philosophical school of the time.