Barnard - Graphic Design As Communication

Most people see more examples of graphic design before they get to work than they see examples of art in a year. Before they are even fully awake, most people will see the numbers and letters on the faces of alarm clocks, the colours, shapes and lettering on tubes of toothpaste, the letters and symbols on taps and showers, the signs for On and Off on the kettle, the packaging of their tea or coffee, the station idents on morning television and the print, photography and layout of the newspaper. This is before they climb into cars (with front and rear badges and logos, and a dashboard full of tiny pictures, symbols and numbers) or onto buses and trains (encrusted with corporate identities, advertising and more badges and corporate logos), and make it along the road (adorned with advertising, bus-stops, shop-fronts and other signs giving warnings, instructions, information and directions), to work (where yet more graphic design informs them of the location of Reception, lavatory, lift and, in some cases, library). Graphic design is everywhere. Yet it is often taken for granted, passing unnoticed and unremarked as it blends in with the visual culture of everyday life.

Graphic design is even unnoticed by those unacknowledged legislators of the lexical world, the compilers of dictionaries. It may come as something of a surprise to learn that graphic design and graphic designer are included in neither Chambers English Dictionary (1988) nor The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1990 imprint). Writing in 1993, Alina Wheeler (1997: 845) noted that no American dictionary included these phrases either. Moreover, assuming that anyone who has got this far already has an inkling of what graphic design is (why pick up the book otherwise?), the fact that entire cultures have a blind spot to something that is so obvious, that literally stares people in the face every time they turn on a tap, glance at a newspaper, open a pack of gum or click on a website, will be as inexplicable as it is surprising. As Wheeler points out, these dictionaries pride themselves on being up to date: they encourage members of the public to inform them of new words and they employ teams of specialist experts who are constantly alert to the spoken and written appearance of novel words. How did they miss graphic design/er? There are even quite respectable universities with departments of graphic design, who churn out thousands of eminently employable graphic designers every year. How is it that the words denoting them and the work they produce are not included in dictionaries?

One explanation may begin with the idea that graphic design passes unnoticed. Newspapers, gum-wrappers and websites are read for their content, not for their layout, choice of typeface or use of colour. Most people don't even know they are reading the letters or words on their bathroom taps; they study the newspaper headline for the politics or the sports results and they pick up the gum with the blue wrapper and white writing. What most people do not do is admire the sans serif in the bathroom, nor do they marvel at the clarity of Helvetica on the page or appreciate the way the nutritional information has been incorporated into the overall design of the wrapper. The graphic work is invisible in that sense and the hitherto insupportable claim of lazy and irresponsible designers everywhere, that they are merely providing a vehicle with which to communicate someone else's message, suddenly finds a prop. If most graphic design passes most people by most of the time, then it is no wonder that the language of most people, as it is reported by dictionaries, does not include the words graphic design.