Digital Future of Graphic Design

Over the past four years that I have studied and worked in Graphic Design I have seen a vast change in designing for screen and designing for print and personally, I think the digital future of graphic design is very current and growing rapidly. I think digital is the future, but print will never be dead. I think one of the main reasons graphic design is turning digital is the sheer amount of smart phones that allow anybody at anytime to surf the internet, play on apps and view digital graphic design at any instance.

Personally I don’t ever think that the future of graphic design will totally be digital because I think there will always be room for graphic design in items such as packaging, posters, shop fronts, business cards etc. However I do believe that most of the items stated above could be created for screen and shown on the Internet. For example business cards would be produced on screen for peoples websites or could also be sent out as e-mailers. I think there are so many more current ways of showcasing graphic design than standard old school print.

Recently I have noticed that graphics that are printed have started to become a trend in the illustration styles of Graphic Design. I think this is a really important point to state as I think the future for graphic design can never be determined as one hundred per cent print or one hundred per cent digital as I think the trends that are set throughout the period of time will be very reflective for the future of Graphic Design. I don’t believe that by looking at any of the current trends will give anyone an idea on what the future of Graphic Design is because I think they change so randomly and at any particular time.

Taking a quote from a conversation between two graphic designers that I have found on the Internet: ‘Print isn’t dead, but it’s certainly not a David and Goliath battle anymore. David threw the rock and he won, but the rock didn’t kill Goliath. You have to eliminate paper before you can kill print design, and while the Kindle is a great gadget, it’s not making Hammermill think about closing down their paper mills.’ The quote was taken from ‘http://www.spoonfeddesign.com/graphic-design-and-the-digital-revolution’ and I believe that it’s a very important fact to state, as I believe that there will always be room for print. However, screen is currently doing impeccably well and seems to be the current trend, but believe me, it won’t last. Another statement that came from the same article was: ‘If you even change your terminology a bit, print lives a little longer. It’s about sensibilities more than medium. Instead of electronic versus print, it’s static versus interactive. Nobody stopped taking pictures when video cameras came into the picture, and movies or TV didn’t go away with the introduction of the home movie camera. But it did make the creative stop and look at what they were doing.’ I think this point is also something to think about as it states that design for screen is starting to happen more often and becoming more and more common but it doesn’t mean that it is going to stop print and original methods of graphic design.

I think another objective to consider about the digital future of graphic design has to be web design and the constant demand for websites. In the last few years I believe that web design is one of the most up and coming parts of the design industry and I think the fact that a lot of people are wanting motion and interactivity in there designs is reflecting on designs turning from print to screen as a printed poster or leaflet cannot be interacted with other that it being picked up and read from. However I think even though there are some ways of getting around font restrictions there are still some restrictions with certain fonts and this is a let down on designing for screen so this is one reason why I think the digital future of graphic design may still be with print rather than screen,

New inventions such as Apples iPad, and different tablets, in my opinion are what are to blame the change and the digital future of graphic design on because of the ways that designers are going to have to adapt to working and the ways they are going to have to produce graphics have all changed because the way the graphic are being seen and the sizes they are being viewed in have changed drastically over the past few years.

To sum up what I think the digital future of graphic design is I would state that within the next twenty years I would expect up to 80 per cent of graphic design would be being created for screens for items such as smart phones and tablets and I think designs for print will become increasing more rare as well as more expensive because there will be a smaller population of printers and designers that design directly for print.

Overall I think the digital future of graphic design is developing rapidly. But so is everything else…