Graphic Design As Communication — A written and visual response

15 min readFeb 26, 2023

Graphic Design As Communication 2, front cover

The opening chapter in Malcolm Barnard’s 2005 Graphic Design As Communication attempts to establish the constituent functions involved within the wide-ranging practice of graphic design. The chapter aptly titled “Graphic Design and Communication” openly asks the question, “What is graphic design?” At the time of reading, the article served as the second of three “warm-up” exercises in a semester-long design research course. It was a course taken as part of my M.Des from 2009–2011. This was a time when the question was prescient, given the massive amount of change the practice would undergo throughout the 2010s continuing into the 2020s. At the time, several frustrations began to arise within my practice, working at a high level in various design studio roles. The increasing sense of distraction and distress experienced was largely due to a growing internal conflict. It emanated between the control industry imposed within the process of making, as opposed to the process through which I was interested in making work. The designers who I respected at the time assumed multi-disciplinary roles within the methods of making work in the practices they were conducting. They straddled a line between art-making and designing within the execution of their projects. Their involvement included everything from the conceptualizing of projects to illustrating and making visually expressive imagery within the work; from writing content through to typesetting it; photographing subject matter, colour correcting, and taking on production design responsibilities; to finally printing the work, binding, and finishing it all into book form. This was exciting, and I wanted more insight into how they managed to do it.

Graphic Design As Communication 2, opening summary and internal page spread

As a hungry young designer, I was eager to learn by doing, focussing at every step to increase my knowledge of — and experience within — design. My idols, producing incredible work showcased in design journals and print journalism of the day were making exciting, complex, process-intensive work. This fascinated and energized me. I would read about it, study it, try to reverse engineer it and try to learn as much as possible from it. It also appeared to be the most inaccessible way to practice — I couldn’t understand how they were able to do it all and “get away with it.” I decided to take some time away from professional practice, focussing instead on a few years of research, study, travel, and scheduling innumerable conversations with artists and designers. Many meetings were made at conferences throughout Canada, the USA, and Europe, and through these encounters, I began to understand a few things. That understanding began with the reading of this article and through the making of simple projects such as this one. These design prompts usually started with a few simple questions. These simple questions established several exciting directions with which to explore design at more personal, social, and cultural levels.

What is graphic design?

Barnard begins with the basics. The word ‘graphic’ comes from the Greek graphein which translates from the mark-making of both written and drawn marks. [1] He is careful to point out that ‘design’ confers more than the simple act of making marks, as both ‘planning’ is integral within the process of ‘designing’. This conveys that the designer exerts both thought and reflection as actions within the process, whether in the studio or out in the field. “[T]hought and reflection are already included in the process of producing written and drawn marks.” [2] The omnipresent nature of graphic design is defined by Tibor Kalman through his wide-ranging definition of graphic design as “a medium… a means of communication” consisting of “the use of words and images on more or less everything, more or less everywhere.” [3] Kalman is expressing the ubiquity of graphic design. It appears in limitless forms:

“[F]ourteenth-century Japanese erotic engravings as well as twentieth-century ‘publications like Hooters and Wild Vixens’, Hallmark cards as well as Esprit and the design of cheap paperback books as well as of expensive hardbacks. Kalman’s selection is clearly intended to make the point that graphic design is not limited to high culture or low culture…” [4] — Tibor Kalman

For Kalman, graphic design is omni-cultural, designed by and for all types of cultures — a point I’ll return to later. Kalman, interestingly, refrains from discussing processes of reproduction. That graphic design is historically regarded as an endeavour based on production processes reliant upon reproducible mechanics does not enter into Kalman’s worldview of graphic design. This process of making multiples as a planned procedure is left out of his design lexicon. Kalman focuses more on the ubiquity of the practice rather than the process of the practice. However, reproduction is central to the design process; it reduces unit costs through the production of making multiples rather than one-off artifacts. Graphic design also capitalizes on the standardization of industrial materials — or rather, graphic design is intricately linked with emerging technologies providing ever more streamlined access to manufacture. Manufacturing at an industrial scale provided the ability to plan. Standardization assured that each widget, identical in form and function through mass production, would seamlessly assemble with other complex widgets to produce increasingly precise and sophisticated products. This provided the technical ability to design, source, integrate, and produce much more precisely. The ability to produce sophisticated multiples also increased the immediacy with which assembly could occur. As Richard Hollis succinctly states, “Unlike the artist, the designer plans for mechanical reproduction.” [5] Designers understood the expanding capabilities of mass production and were able to create around the strictures and rules of the production process. As Paul Jobling and David Crowley state, mass production introduced affordable and accessible products to an ever-widening audience. [6] For graphic design, Barnard notes, processes of mass production gave way to a distinct form of communication, independent from the century-old practice of art, as a means of reproducing an image or message beyond the limitations of an original.

Barnard references an idea from the essay “Is There a Fine Art to Illustration?”, written by Marshall Arisman. To rank visual practices based on ‘purity’, Arisman articulates a hierarchy:

1. Fine Art is pure.
2. Illustration is the beginning of selling out.
3. Graphic Design is commercial art.
4. Advertising is selling — period. [7]

The concept of ‘purity’ is here equated with art, followed by the increasingly debased levels of ‘impurity’ through illustration, design, and advertising — all of which are saddled with the baggage of impure commercial intentions. The artist, the ranking leads the reader to believe, is inoculated against impurity due to the noncommercial, customized, handcrafted practice of art as a production model situated around bespoke-driven forms of production. This model would then require ignoring the countless examples of historic and contemporary internationally renowned artists employing large teams of studio apprentices and production staff driven to aid in the creation of works through to the packaging and shipping of commissioned pieces to paying clients. Free markets typically skew toward mass production for economies of scale. Advantages experienced through mechanical forms of reproduction are typically reflected through lower costs per unit, which in turn provide goods and services to larger audiences sold at more accessible prices. Or to clarify: economies of scale typically lead to increased purchasing power. This is possible through the scaling of operations — typically measured through output over time. Designers then apply these sets of constraints to facilitate the mass production of goods for a wider audience at a lower cost per item. This doesn’t necessarily imply that production processes outputting fewer bespoke widgets are aimed toward an affluent audience at a higher cost per item. It implies that design and the inherent production processes incorporated offer a wider range of options for supplying an increased rate of goods to a larger audience. It might do well here by allocating the level of “purity” to the provision of improved lives through increased access to goods and services.

Graphic Design As Communication 2, internal page spread

The functions of graphic design

Barnard spends some time exploring several models articulating the main functions of graphic design practice. He begins with prominent design writer and historian Richard Hollis, who lists three long-standing functions. Identification: “what something is, or where it came from”, such as logos, packaging, signage, or book covers. Information and instruction: the job here is to “indicate the relationship of one thing to another in direction, position and scale”, such as topographical maps, diagrams, and directional signage meant to offer context and guidance. Presentation and promotion are the third: behaviour-changing posters and advertising, designed to attract attention in busy contexts and to leave a lasting, memorable impression. [8]

Jacque Aumont’s three-tiered model is the next reference: that of the symbolic, the epistemic, and the aesthetic. Symbolic images are visuals representing something else (an idea that requires some type of visual expression due to its ethereal or theoretical nature) such as a god, concept, or cultural value. These images are manifested in any number of ways: representational, abstract, figurative, non-figurative, or personifications. Protagonists from religious texts are often personified, as well as the abstract configurations of Christian crosses, Hindu swastikas, or Egyptian ankhs. Epistemic images carry information about the worldly subject matter, such as stained glass windows through to botanical illustrations. His aesthetic tier of images is meant, quite simply, to delight and create pleasant sensations.

Graphic Design As Communication 2, internal page spreads

From here, Barnard moves on to define four functions that “will account for all graphic production”, accrued from a massive body of critical writing through the contribution of numerous generations of historians, researchers, theorists, and practitioners. They are listed as the informative function, the persuasive (or rhetorical) function, the decorative (or aesthetic) function, and the magical function. Information is the conveyance of knowledge. Here signage, logos, packaging, maps, diagrams, portraits, and much illustrative work transmit information to the audience. These artifacts are designed specifically for the context. The visual complexity is reduced on street signs to be read from the viewpoint of passengers riding in fast-moving vehicles. Store signs within shopping malls may be designed with a greater degree of sophistication and complexity to communicate a company’s values for slower-moving pedestrians. [9] Persuasion is largely articulated through advertising and branding work ranging from political propaganda, to forms of illustration, and even documentary work. [10] The decorative function, as articulated by both Hollis and Aumont, contains no application within graphic design. This perspective has changed over the past few decades, with designers defending the inclusion of — and even focussing on — decoration within their practices. The fourth function, that of the magical, provides “access to the sphere of the sacred”, and as Kalman observes, it “makes something different from what it truly is… transforming one thing into another.” Much of the magic involves interpretation. Kalman reflects on how thirty graphic design students, when given the task to draw specified subject matter, will produce thirty different articulations. The observed item of focus becomes transformed into something different — indeed into as many different things as there are individuals engaged in the process of interpretation. This, says Barnard, is the domain of the magician. [11]

These four functions, so defined, produce forms of graphic design that ultimately make use of most, if not all four functions, at all times. Barnard states that design cannot be purely decorative, or purely informative. Event posters will ultimately inform viewers of times, dates, and locations, along with implemented dress codes and age restrictions. Images will be incorporated to attract the attention of passersby and motorists, while typography will be incorporated suitable to the personality and length of the content. All design emanates aesthetics, whether intended or not. Barnard seems content to associate these four functions universally with the practice of graphic design.

Communication

Graphic design, as defined by Kalman, is a practice of creating “means of communication” through visual elements conveying ideas. This is a crucial point. The practice of graphic design relies on media serving to transport ideas, meanings, and messages from one place to another. These ideas, meanings, and messages are visualized as content in all of their forms. Content is transported between places, typically described as ‘senders’ and ‘receivers’, and this process is understood as communication. [12] Barnard is quick to remind us that neutrality — often promoted by the designers of high modernism — is impossible within the execution of design practice. “One of the consequences is that there can be no neutral, objective conveying of a message if by neutral and objective is meant non-transforming or non-rhetorical. (Transforming should be understood as referring only to the information or the message, not to the receiver of the message. Information that does not transform the receiver is not information).” [13]

“The transfer of information between people” model, Philip Meggs

Philip Meggs articulates the transfer of information between people in a linear, staged format. Within the diagram, he places ‘noise source’ (interference or distortion) at the middle ‘signal’ stage of the process. Meggs was focussing on the telecommunications industry in his design of this diagram, admitting it failed to address crucial elements within the communication process. Although this theory “addresses the method of communication’, it does not deal with the ‘content’ or ‘purpose’ of communication and is therefore ‘inadequate to explain communicative art forms including… graphic design.” [14] The question arises: who are the transmitters and receivers? Does the information source begin with the designer, or does the designer encode as they often interpret the subject (from a client or a writer) into visual material? As graphic design is a practice largely focussed on commissioned work, is then a proposed client the information source? Is the source in this diagram confident in what exactly was transmitted and what was not? If so, this assumes that full control over the message and the signal was maintained. Only within this scenario would the source understand what failed to transmit and recognize it as noise. Noise can also here be understood as interpretation: what is read as “edgy” in one culture may be read with offense by another:

“Few graphic designers and fewer advertisers, however, will admit to intentionally broadcasting offensive material. If, however, the offense is noise, then the sender cannot be in control of the signal and they cannot be said to know what they are transmitting. However, there are not many graphic designers who will admit to not being in control of their work and to communicating unintended meanings.” [15] — Malcolm Barnard

The issue with these models, in many respects, is the absence of both social and cultural positions of the actors involved. Consider this model:

Who, says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect.

The addition of ‘effect’ improves this communication model from Meggs’ previous version, but unfortunately, we are again questioning the ‘who’ in this scenario. Is it the designer, the client, or an audience group? Barnard continues to review several additional models, which need not be included here, as the missing ingredient within the model has now been identified. No mention of a cultural or social context is included, and the ‘whom’ seems to occupy a passive position within the model. This is why toward the end of the chapter, semiology is brought into the discussion to include all points of contact residing ‘outside’ of the linear process of communication as articulated in most communication models. “The social, cultural and economic locations, or identities, of the people producing and interpreting graphic design are detached or ignored in the talk of ‘sender’, ‘receiver’ and so on.” [16] Which is unfortunate. Designers must consider how audiences will respond to content, as these very audiences cannot be separated from the surrounding social and cultural contexts. From the semiological perspective, communication is the ‘production and exchange of meanings’ [17], placing more stress on the interactivity implicit within the transmission process. Senders and receivers now generate meaning within the model as they are implicated in acting upon more established cultural/social positions. From this “a message (meaning) is something transmitted in the process of communication, not solely through the artifact itself. According to semiology, the message or meaning is something constructed and interpreted in communication.” [18]

Design as co-creation

My work began to assume a new shape within the unique set of conditions it was being immersed. It was here that the work I was exploring in my master’s degree began to address different concerns. The freedom permissible within the space of the university studio was refreshing, experimental, and fun. It occupied a diametrically opposite extreme perspective from that experienced by designing for clients. The linearity of the process required within a for-profit design studio practice cultivated the notion that designers must obtain certitude, and labor with extreme efficiency for studios to remain financially profitable. The brutal efficiency with which studio designers must work eliminates the ability for designers to pursue more creatively experimental exploration — conditions considered extraneous to satisfying clients. The freedom to explore the ridiculous within the mostly self-directed design exploration of the master’s program presented a creative — though demanding — critical method of making new things in new ways. These were investigations that I would never have the freedom to propose in professional contexts. The work began to radically change.

I began to make and position this new work in public contexts. They were explorations made with audiences, not for them; the content didn’t speak to audiences, it was generated through their interaction. These artifacts were designed to be manipulated and transformed. Audience members began to construct communication through their interpretation and transformation of the artifacts into new variations and permutations. Co-creatively, messages began to appear upon the artifacts, building up over time, changing and morphing with each added response, mark made, and alteration applied to the form. This process of making with prevented any certainty or anticipation of the outcome. It was radically different from processes of making for passive audiences. A type of randomness entered into the process, and the uncertainty of potential transformation was exciting to document over time. This new creative process began to change the way I identified with the role of a creative maker. Much of what I was taught about design came in the form of modernist ideology, still much in fashion throughout the 1990s. Neutrality, control, clarity. The artifacts I was beginning to design and position within public spaces to provoke interaction were feeling more like prompts, their half-finished state inviting interaction. Audiences became actors — participants in the creation of new messages, meanings, cultural expressions, and contextual images. I continued to define myself as a designer, but one who facilitated — rather than restricted — audience interaction.

I now find myself at another significant corner within my career, retooling through learning, and education, seeking new communities, new practices, new tools, new areas of inquiry, and new obsessions. Looking back to these early projects of experimentation, the work feels dated and unrefined, however, the core ideas embedded in these explorations offer new insights observable through a more mature perspective. I see nuance in them over a decade later. Revisiting this work has been intriguing, and editing the written texts has clarified the concepts of the readings. At the time, I did not have the language to communicate the effect the readings had on my understanding of design. However, I did begin to glimpse a new potential for design, and what it could be. These early exercises began a journey for reframing the role and outcome design holds within my practice. From the perspective of a designer embracing a self-initiated practice, the value gleaned from this second of three warm-up assignments has been exceptional!