Graphic design as communication

• Main Author: Barnard, Malcolm 1958- (Author)
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: New York Routledge 2005
• Subjects: Symbolism in art; Communication in art; Graphic arts
• Online Access: Click Here to View Status and Holdings.

 Malcolm Barnard explores how meaning and identity are at the core of every graphic design project and argues that the role and function of graphic design is, and always has been, communication. Drawing on a range of theoretical approaches including those of Derrida, Saussure, Foucault, and Barthes, and taking examples from advertising, magazines, illustration, website design, comics, greetings cards and packaging, Graphic Design as Communication looks at how graphic design contributes to the formation of social and cultural identities. Malcolm Barnard discusses the ways in which racial/ethnic groups, age groups and gender groups are represented in graphic design, as well as how images and texts communicate with different cultural groups. He also explores how graphic design relates to both European and American modernism, and its relevance to postmodernism and globalisation in the twenty-first century and asks why, when graphic design is such an integral part of our society and culture, it is not acknowledged and understood in the same way that art is.