flat design — Design4Users https://design4users.com/tag/flat-design/ Thu, 16 Mar 2023 13:22:05 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://design4users.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/cropped-favicon-32x32.png flat design — Design4Users https://design4users.com/tag/flat-design/ 32 32 How to Create Catchy Flat Illustration: Tips and Tricks https://design4users.com/how-to-create-illustration/ Fri, 24 Jan 2020 15:33:50 +0000 https://design4users.com/?p=8481 Whatever is the direction digital artists choose for their professional realization, one of the crucial and hardest challenges is finding own creative style. Today we are discussing this theme with Tubik graphic designer and illustrator Yaroslava Yatsuba, experienced in both traditional and digital art. She is keen to share some useful tips and practices helping […]

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Whatever is the direction digital artists choose for their professional realization, one of the crucial and hardest challenges is finding own creative style. Today we are discussing this theme with Tubik graphic designer and illustrator Yaroslava Yatsuba, experienced in both traditional and digital art. She is keen to share some useful tips and practices helping designers to find and keep their own style in business and theme flat illustrations for various purposes. Let’s consider what graphic designers could do so that not to sink in the variety of styles and catch their own golden fish fulfilling professional goals.

digital illustration design

What Is Flat Design?

Let’s start with the terminology. Today, the term «flat design» is applied to graphics for numerous purposes and tasks which have common stylistic features. Flat design is the direction that found its broad and diverse expression on digital art and is famous for the minimalistic and concise use of visual expressive means. Nowadays the term is widely used as the opposite of «rich design» due to harmonic simplicity taken as the basis of this design approach. The most prominent feature which actually has inspired the name of this direction is applying flat 2-dimensional visual details as the opposite to highly realistic and detailed skeuomorphic images. Flat design has been developing for the last couple of years covering more and more fields of graphic design still finding the broadest and most diverse application in the sphere of digital design for web and mobile interfaces. This design approach is found as the style favorable for enhancing usability and visual harmony of user interfaces.

Obviously, flat design hasn’t appeared out of thin air. Its roots are usually set in Swiss style which historians of the design sphere find its direct ancestor. Swiss style, also known as International Typographic Style or shorter International Style, is the direction which appeared and got its dose of criticism in the 1920s and later won its bright expression in graphic design in Switzerland of 1940-50s fairly becoming the solid foundation of graphic design of mid 20th century around the world.

Although this style got a variety of expressions in the sphere of visual design for print, like posters, stamps, postcards, book covers, magazines, etc., it significantly broadened its horizons with the era of digital design, especially in the domain of design for user interfaces. Websites and mobile applications going through the dynamic development of creative search opened the amazing and fruitful perspective for this minimalist and functional approach to design solutions. The style got the name «flat design» (or flat graphic design) which became instantly popular and started a new direction in graphic design daring skeuomorphism and «rich design» and supported with new challenges opened by the field of interaction design. The variety of design directions available and progressing these days engages flat design illustration as a flexible and artistic approach successfully winning its own place. Read more about flat design, it’s history and benefits in our earlier article.

digital illustration design

How to make flat illustrations original and add personal style to them

Today, many designers try their creativity in flat illustration. To avoid getting lost in the great and increasing variety of artworks, it’s vital to work out your own presentation and manner. It gets a bit more difficult in flat which is rather limited in expressive means and volumes than other styles. Yet, difficult doesn’t mean impossible.

Here are the tips for creating flat illustrations from Tubik graphic designer Yaroslava Yatsuba which she got from her everyday practice.

Step away from the simple geometrization of shapes

Take your sketchbook and a pencil and rough out quick sketches by hand. The sketch will take up the minimum of time compared to creating a digital picture. Moreover, it will help to quickly find bold lines as well as interesting movements or poses for a character. Having made a sketch, take your time and analyze it, then try experimenting. Try hypertrophied, rounded or, vice versa, sharpened shapes – it might contribute precious details clarifying the nature of the movement or showing the character’s emotional state.

digital illustration design

digital illustration design

Analyze artworks by other illustrators

Don’t miss a chance to understand what principles and approaches they apply. Consider which elements or color solutions made their artworks attractive to you.

Chose interesting perspective and composition

Make sure that the composition is balanced if you need to express the state of calmness – or intentionally tilted if you want to show dynamics or tension. If the composition is multidimensional, the planning should be distinctly shown: make an accent on the plan at which the major characters or elements are placed. You can also add rhythm to the composition with scaling the elements or color and tone accents.

digital illustration design

digital illustration design

Consider different angles

Having decided on the composition, imagine how the scene would look from different angles: in the perspective with the third convergence point, through a fish-eye lens, from a 3-year-old’ viewpoint or in contrary how a super-tall basketball player would see it. This trick will help you to understand which of the angles will be the most beneficial for the goal and message of the illustration.

digital illustration design

Apply original metaphors which will help to share the idea behind the illustration

Don’t just catch the first images that come to mind: the risk is high that it will be widespread and won’t look original enough to be really eye-catchy.

landing page digital illustration design

Use colors strengthening the idea

The thoughtfully selected color palette will help to strengthen the idea and message, it will set the appropriate mood and put accents on what is major. Keep up the tone contrast of all the composition: to check the correctness of the chosen tones, view the illustration in black-and-white mode – it should stay contrast and well-read.

digital illustration design

Try textures

Usage of textures adds the vividness to the picture, contributes individuality and effect of “hand-made”. Also, it will soften the vector images.

Textures may imitate:

  • real physical materials and details (such as scratches or scuff marks)
  • geometric details (lines, stripes, dots)
  • hand-made stuff with not ideally even live lines

In addition, colored photos and full-color patterns may be used to create the effect of applique work. All the mentioned variants may be used both separately and in combination, this way developing a personal artistic style when you create flat design graphics.

digital illustration design

6 features of a good flat illustration

Summing up all the tips, we may define the features of effective flat design illustrations.

  • Original stylization
  • Thought-out composition
  • Non-standard perspective
  • Carefully selected color palette
  • Applying textures
  • Use of metaphors

Try this checklist for your design experiments to create a flat design illustration – maybe, they will lead you to the golden fish of your own recognizable style.

digital illustration

More illustration examples

Here are some more illustrations by Yaroslava featuring the practical cases of how the tips given above may be creatively applied. The designer shows that some limitations of this style are just another reason for trailblazing experiments with flat design colors, perspectives, characters, and metaphors.

digital illustration design

digital illustration design

digital illustration design

digital illustration design

people illustration design

landing page design

Useful Reading and Inspiration

If you want to see more collections of illustrations or discover how they work in particular design projects, here’s the set of posts for you.

17 Trends in Illustration and Graphic Design to Meet 2020
Motion Design: 20 Inspiring Animated Illustrations
Winter Olympics Illustration. Step-by-Step Process
Moonworkers. Digital Illustrations on Film Production
Florence App. Illustrations for Healthcare Service
Digital Art: 40+ Inspiring Illustrations on Diverse Themes
26 Digital Artworks About Design Process

Originally published in Tubik Blog

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Get the Ball Rolling: 12 Cool Football Animations https://design4users.com/get-the-ball-rolling-12-cool-football-animations/ Wed, 20 Jun 2018 10:13:25 +0000 http://www.design4users.top/?p=7373 Bright D4U Inspiration set devoted to football theme to celebrate Mundial 2018. Check awesome animations featuring football players created by motion design teams.

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With the whole world celebrating Mundial these days, football catches us everywhere. No wonder: being one of the most popular kinds of sports worldwide, this game has built the special culture around itself. For those, who feel and appreciate the football spirit, we have collected the fresh D4U Inspiration set of funny and bright animations made by teams skilled in motion design such as RADIO, Cub Studio, and Mioe Studio. So, keep your eye on a ball and get inspired. Ole, ole, ole!

football-animations

By Mioe Studio

football-motion-design

By Mioe Studio

motion-design-footballer

By Mioe Studio

animation-football-design

By RADIO

football-animation

By RADIO

soccer-player-animation

By RADIO

footbal-motion-design

By Cub Studio

goal_messi_football-animation-design

By Cub Studio

football-design-motion

By Cub Studio

motion-design-football

By Cub Studio

football-motion-design-inspiration

By Cub Studio

soccer-football-animation

By Cub Studio


Title illustration by RADIO

You may also like the collections of love illustrationsspring illustrationswinter illustrationssummer illustrationsautumn illustrations, and other D4U Inspiration posts

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Design Case Study: Opera. Animation for Product Video https://design4users.com/design-case-study-opera-animation-for-product-video/ Thu, 13 Apr 2017 13:56:57 +0000 http://design4users.com/?p=3566 The fresh case study on animation: the story of Opera project on the design of flat animated video showing key innovations the browser presented during the year.

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A picture is able to tell a lot instantly. It can inform, call associations,  set the mood and atmosphere, give the insights and wake up curiosity, get people inspired or engage further considerations and do that all in a beautiful and attractive manner. Still, to spark all that amazing potential, the picture needs to be created by a professional, who knows how to do that magic via talent, skills and experience.

Having the whole set of such professionals onboard, we finished the last year with an interesting and challenging project. In December Tubik team got the chance of creative collaboration with Opera to work on the bright and catchy year-in-review video. You could already have seen the video and design process presentation in Tubik Portfolio, and today we invite our readers to take a deeper look at this design story in a new case study.

opera-video-design-case-study-tubik

Task

Design of a short animated video “Opera 2016: Year in Review” within a tight timeline.

Process

Introducing a customer, Opera is a web browser developed by Opera Software. According to Opera Software, it had more than 350 million users worldwide in the 4th quarter 2014. Total Opera mobile users reached 291 million in June 2015. According to SlashGeek, Opera has originated features later adopted by other web browsers, including Speed Dial, pop-up blocking, browser sessions, private browsing, and tabbed browsing.

The initial stage of project discussion with the customer showed that they needed an animated video accomplished in an attractive manner immediately setting a positive and cheerful mood. The video had to present the essential milestones of the year when Opera, one of the actively used web browsers around the world, presented fresh innovative features to its numerous users. Opera team enjoyed bright colors and lifestyle object compositions and the approach they wished to use for the video was to devote each composition to a specific month when a particular feature was delivered. It was agreed that the visual performance should feature the 3D flat style, minimalistic animations, and lush colors – everything that the Tubik team is strong at.

Meanwhile, the early stage of discussions on the creative process also established the biggest challenge of the project: the timeline was extremely short. The team of designers had only 5 days for design and animation of 8 complex flat illustrations full of details, transforming the company message, looking bright and fresh, and keeping visual consistency to look natural in one video. This was the type of project that proved the great power of teamwork when all the participants of the creative process worked like a clock.

Illustrations

The first creative stage of the project had to result in a set of flat illustrations presenting the prominent innovations of the year: Ad Blocker, Battery Saver, Video Pop-Out, Personal News, VPN, Faster Startup, Currency Converter. All the illustrations had to present the interiors decorated with bright details close and clear for every user, and also set the atmosphere of the particular season and the visual element showing the presented browser feature. In this way, combined in the video and replacing each other, the illustrations would support the feeling of the year flowing. Here is the final set presented to motion designers who had to do further work on breathing life into the pictures.

opera-video-animation-case-study

This is the intro illustration opening the video, setting a cheerful mood, and giving a strong link with the brand.

opera-video-animation-case-study-4

This illustration presents the feature of native Ad-Blocker, which Opera presented in spring, so the color palette corresponds to the shades traditionally associated with this time of the year.

opera-video-animation-case-study-3

The next illustration presents the feature of Battery Saver, which got active in late spring: the season is supported with a general bright and sunny color palette, flowers in the vase, and green trees outside the window.

opera-video-animation-case-study-6

Another illustration was designed to present the feature of Video Pop-Out, enabling users to watch videos while browsing. The big window shows the green plants and blue sky and the diagonal light shadows let us guess the shiny sun, the table sets the scene with a couple of books and a glass of lemonade, and even the video on the screen shows the seashore and people having fun – everything allows viewers to understand easily that this user-friendly innovation was added in summer.

opera-video-animation-case-study-07

The next artwork is associated with the feature of a personal newsreader. A bit darker sky, a bit longer shadows, some clouds, the cup of tea and red-ripe apples on the tree say: when users got the ability to read the news right from their browser, the summer had almost finished.

opera-video-animation-case-study-8

The feature of built-in VPN enhancing the privacy of browsing was set up in autumn, which us immediately clear from the view with yellow trees outside, while the passport seen on the table sets the strong connection with the matter of privacy.

opera-video-animation-case-study-9

Next illustration featured the faster speed of start-up loading, so the key visual element of the composition is the speedometer shown on the computer screen. It immediately sets association with the issue of speed while the color palette chosen for this artwork enables users to feel the vibes of deep autumn.

opera-video-animation-case-study-10

The last innovation to present was the built-in currency converter enabling users to shop online faster and easier. Some details in the picture, like the calculator, the decorative recognizable model of a shop placed on the shelf, the delivery truck behind the window as well as the layout on the screen set the atmosphere of shopping, while the outside view and the gifts let us know it’s the busy time of buying Christmas presents.

Having a full set of illustrations approved by the client, motion designers came into play and presented the variants of transitions, while graphic designers worked on the fonts for the short descriptions to be used in the video. The fonts had to look highly readable and correspond to the general stylistic concept.

opera-review-video-animation-tubik-studio

The sample of animated transitions between the slides livened up with the natural movements of the details close to motion in real life.

slide-with-fonts-opera-case-study

The sample of the fonts used on the slide in combination with the illustration

Final video

Five days of hard and coordinated work of the design team resulted in the final video of about 40 seconds showing the full set of key innovations Opera presented in 2016.

In one of the previous articles, devoted to designing processes and work styles, we mentioned: the studio experience lets us believe that teamwork organized wisely and thoughtfully doesn’t take away designers’ individual space or freedom — vice versa, it adds to it the power of solid support and prospective ways for bigger and more complex, therefore more interesting and challenging projects and tasks. The project for Opera became one of the convincing proofs.

Design Case Study Opera. Animation for Product Video.

In their testimonial to the Tubik team, Opera Software team mentioned: “The loose storyboard and tight timeline we presented you with were undoubtedly a challenge but everyone is very happy with how well your team delivered on it!” No doubt, this project became not only a great and absorbing challenge but also a case of fruitful collaboration and bright finale for the extremely busy design year.

Design Case Studies

Design Case Study: Brand Intro Cartoon for Wedding Dresses Brand

OffCents. Explainer Video Production

Binned. Design for Promo Video Production

Step by Step Guide to Custom Promo Video Design

5 Reasons to Make Animated Video for Your Product

Design for Web: Promotional Videos. Benefits and Pitfalls

Originally written for Tubik Blog

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Flat Design: History and Modern Practices https://design4users.com/flat-design-history-practice-and-benefits/ Thu, 15 Dec 2016 15:41:17 +0000 http://design4users.com/?p=3032 The article on the variety of creative performance of flat design. Introduction into its definition, history, benefits and practices for UI, branding and print.

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Famous artist Edgar Degas once said: “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” In terms of graphic design, which could be also defined as art solving the particular task, this flow goes even further: what you make others see often says them what to do, what to pay attention to and helps to solve some problems. Graphic design is able to change the mood and message via the slightest changes of shapes and shades, letters, and spacing. Trends in this sphere, which has become an integral part of everyday life, present an important object of consideration as they influence decision-making and problem-solving potential of modern products as well as form users’ tastes. Today we are going to focus our attention on one of the most popular directions of modern graphic design called flat design.

Definition of flat design

Today, the term “flat design” is applied to graphics for numerous purposes and tasks which have common stylistic features. Flat design is the direction that found its broad and diverse expression on digital art and is famous for minimalist and concise use of visual expressive means. Nowadays the term is widely used as the opposite of “rich design” due to harmonic simplicity taken as the basis of this design approach. The most prominent feature which actually has inspired the name of this direction is applying flat 2-dimensional visual details as the opposite to highly realistic and detailed skeuomorphic images. Flat design has been developing actively for the last couple of years covering more and more fields of graphic design still finding the broadest and most diverse application in the sphere of digital design for web and mobile interfaces. This design approach is found as the style favorable for enhancing usability and visual harmony of user interfaces.

TUBIK_Toonie_Alarm

Origins of flat design

Obviously, flat design hasn’t appeared out of thin air. Its roots are usually set in Swiss style which historians of the design sphere find its direct ancestor. Swiss style, also known as International Typographic Style or shorter International Style, is the direction which appeared and got its dose of criticism in the 1920s and later won its bright expression in graphic design in Switzerland of 1940-50s fairly becoming the solid foundation of graphic design of mid 20th century around the world. The leaders of this creative movement were Josef Müller-Brockmann, the representative of the Zurich School of Arts and Krafts, and Armin Hofmann from the Basel School of Design. According to Design Is History portal, the brief description of key features of this style is the following: “…the style favored simplicity, legibility and objectivity. Of the many contributions to develop from the two schools were the use of, sans-serif typography, grids, and asymmetrical layouts. Also stressed was the combination of typography and photography as a means of visual communication. The primary influential works were developed as posters, which were seen to be the most effective means of communication.”

swisss-design-poster

Joseph Müller-Brockmann, Auto Club of Switzerland Poster, 1955

Swiss-design

Joseph Müller-Brockmann,  Zürich Town Hall Poster, 1955

poster-design

Armin Hoffman, 1959 poster for the ballet Giselle

The posters featured here as examples make it obvious that fans of this style liked simple forms, bold and strict fonts of high readability level, harmonic and geometrically based combinations of details, flat illustrations, and clear visual hierarchy. It quickly grew more and more popular in different countries of the world and got its new life in the art of the early 21st century.

Although this style got a variety of expressions in the sphere of visual design for print, like posters, stamps, postcards, book covers, magazines, etc., it significantly broadened its horizons with the era of digital design, especially in the domain of design for user interfaces. Websites and mobile applications going through the dynamic development of creative search opened the amazing and fruitful perspective for this minimalist and functional approach to design solutions. The style got the name “flat design” which became instantly popular and started a new direction in graphic design daring skeuomorphism and “rich design” and supported with new challenges opened by the field of interaction design.

The first step to boosting flat UI popularity in digital products was taken by Microsoft presenting a new flat and minimalist style of their products: this movement started in the early 2000s and was widely adopted in the products of 2010, in particular in mobile interface design for Windows Phone 7. The basic features of flat design such as intuitive simple shapes, bold clear typography, bright contrast colors, long shadows, the absence of complex details and textures found their further development leap in 2013 when Apple released iOS 7 based on the principles of flat graphics as the basis for user-friendly intuitive interfaces. It could be also said some key principles of flat design found their expression in Material Design for Google, still with some deviants like drop shadows, etc.

weather UI design animation

Basic and prominent features of the flat design include:

  • the simplicity of shapes and elements
  • minimalism
  • functionality
  • bold and highly readable typography
  • clear and strict visual hierarchy
  • close attention to details
  • a thoughtful appliance of bright colors and contrast supporting quick visual perception
  • avoiding textures, gradients and complex forms
  • applying the principles of grids, geometric approach, and visual balance.

UI animation restaurant app

Benefits of flat design

Flat design has a number of benefits determining its popularity and diversity in digital design which influenced the trends of modern print design as well. Among the most significant of them, we would mention:

  • readability and legibility
  • clear visual hierarchy via shapes, colors, and fonts
  • effective support of quick and intuitive navigation in web and mobile interfaces
  • easy adjustability in terms of adaptive and responsive design
  • effective legibility on various screens
  • being easier for developers and usually presents less load for the digital system.

With all the above mentioned, flat design provides a wide field for creative search and stylistic concepts.

tutorial ui illustration

Actual practices: fields for applying graphic flat design

The variety of design directions available and progressing these days engages flat design as a flexible and artistic approach to successfully win its place in all of them to more or less extent. Let’s review the spheres to apply its principles with the bunch of examples by Tubik Studio designers.

User Experience Wireframing

Even at the initial stage of planning the general layout, logic, and transitions the principles of flat design get the chances of their basic service. Digital design tools and software used on this crucial stage enable designers to present clients and the team the unified simply performed scheme of all the app screens or web pages, and even this basic performance already features key traits of visualization typical for flat design. At this step, it is ideal for the quick and effective perception of design solutions based on navigation and key elements given in the simple monochrome scheme.

tubikstudio-ux-design

User Interface Design

User interfaces have definitely become the broad and favorable field for flat design glitz and gloss. It found its development in both abstract user interaction concepts and variety of original interfaces, mascots, icons, interface elements, and illustrations.

UI Interaction Concepts

pull-to-refresh-animation

Pull To Refresh

UI interactions design

Portrait vs Landscape interaction

UI animation pull down

Pull Down

tubikstudio-tab-bar-animation

Tab bar interactions

UI navigation elements and icons

icon-pack-tubik-studio

The set of flat icons

UI illustration

Flat icons applied in Veggie App

tubik-studio-blog_app

Flat icons and tabs design for Blog App

saily categories ui tubik studio

Flat icons applied in Saily App

flat-icons-design

Flat UI design elements for PassFold

UI Interface Illustrations

cafe coupon app ui design

Cafe Coupon App

tubik_studio_weather-icons

Weather App

ui illustration graphic design

Moneywise App

SwiftyBeaver_Illustration

Illustration for SwiftyBeaver

motion design illustration

Timeline App

healthy_stickers_shot_tubik_studio

Healthy Stickers

Theme illustrations

This kind of illustrations provide additional support for digital products and are usually more sophisticated in terms of detalization and satisfying users’ aesthetic needs, at the same time instantly setting the connection with a particular theme.

wallpapers-tubik-studio

Free Colorful Wallpapers

tubik_studio_space_free_wallpapers

Free Space Wallpapers

ui illustration graphic design

Underwater Explorer

Tubik_Halloween_Design

Halloween Haunted Castle

Rio 2016 Olympic Design
Rio 2016

bus_illustration_denys_boldyriev_tubik

Californication Bus

san_francisco_painted_ladies_free_wallpapers_tubik_studio

San Francisco Painted Ladies

Flat Design History and Modern Practice.

Star Wars Rogue One

Print illustration

The variety of purposes for the modern flat design and its growing popularity in digital products of everyday use also influenced other fields of design, in particular, design for printed products like posters and book covers, from which, actually, the approach takes its roots.

tubik_illustration_denys_boldyriev_jazz_tales_book

Tales of the Jazz Age Book Cover

tubik_studio_illustration_pickachu_poster

Pikachu Poster

tubik studio magazine design

Muscles Magazine

jocker_tubik_studio_poster_jocker_illustration_comics

Suicide Squad Poster

graphic design postcard

Spring Girl greeting card

Branding design

These days, branding design sphere also successfully applies principles of flat design, not only because it gives trendy look but also due to its flexibility as many products are presented on devices or get digital support in web or via applications and advertising. Flat design in branding is often represented in logos and mascots.

logo design tubik studio

Logo mascot for Saily App

PassFold logo Tubik Studio

Logo lettermark for PassFold

andre_logo_design_tubik_studio

Logo design for Andre

design4users-logo

Logo for Design4Users

toonie-photo

Logo lettering and mascot for Toonie Alarm

All the facts and benefits mentioned above on the issue of flat design, definitely, do not mean that this style has overcome other design approaches. Any style and direction of design has its own benefits and pitfalls. Still, flat design opened new perspectives, especially in the sphere of user-centered design solutions which present a harmonic balance of beauty and functionality.

Recommended reading

Diverse issues of applying flat design have been an object of professionals’ attention lately. Here is the collection of articles and books for those who would like to read more on the theme.

The beginner’s guide to flat design

10 Top Tips on Creating Flat Design Graphics

Flat Design & Colors

Principles of Flat Design

The history of flat design: How efficiency and minimalism turned the digital world flat

A Look at Flat Design and Why It’s Significant

The True History Of Flat Design

Design is History: Swiss Design

Swiss Graphic Design

Originally written for Tubik Blog

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Graphic Design. Communication via Art https://design4users.com/graphic-design-communication-via-art/ Tue, 18 Oct 2016 13:47:17 +0000 http://design4users.com/?p=2592 The article about basic aspects of modern graphic design as a professional sphere. Definition of graphic design, its directions and skills needed for career.

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Through its history, mankind has invented loads of different ways to communicate and spread ideas or information. Nowadays, we can see that graphic design confidently takes its place among the most popular methods using diverse visual means of communication. Having answered the question “What is graphic design?” on Quora, we also decided to share a bit more extensive version of our thoughts on graphic design definition with readers here.

What is graphic design?

Being now a solidly established sphere of artistic activity, graphic design as a phenomenon and an activity has already been described and explained in many books and articles. Being based on broad practical experience in this direction, we would define graphic design as the art whose aim is communication beyond words.

Graphic design can be described as the sphere of human activity that lies on the crossroads of several directions, first of all, visual arts, communication, and psychology. Basically, graphic designers do the job of communication to others by means of graphic (visual) elements such as images of different style and complexity, types and fonts, pictograms, shapes and sizes, colors and shades, lines and curves etc.

Graphic designer makes all those elements of visual perception transfer the message, so he makes them functional. Therefore, we could say that graphic designers are artists applying their talents mostly not in pure art, but communicating and purposeful art.

graphic-design

Tubik designers creating characters for a new project

Fields of graphic design

Nowadays, graphic design is an incredibly broad sphere for the application of artistic talents. In particular, it includes:

  • illustration
  • identity (logo and branding) design
  • printed publications design (general design and layout of newspapers, magazines, books, etc.)
  • icons and pictograms
  • typography
  • interface graphics and elements
  • print advertisements
  • big print items such as posters and billboards
  • signs
  • packaging design, etc.

Thus, it’s easily seen that modern designers in this sphere have multiple options to apply their talents.

Examples

On the basis of experience in Tubik, which is a full-fledged design team, we can offer some examples of digital graphic design created here.

oonie-alarm-animation

Toonie Alarm (flat illustration featuring a character as the helpful mascot of the application)

graphic design postcard

Girl and flowers (flat illustration featuring characters)

tubik_studio_space_free_wallpapers

Free Space Wallpapers (graphic design piece setting the theme)

monsters flat illustration

Monsters Stickers Set  (flat illustration featuring characters/ mascots)

ui illustration graphic design

Underwater Explorer  (flat illustration featuring the character and setting the theme)

weather icons design tubik studio

Weather Icons Set  (stroke icons to be used as part of user interfaces)

motion design illustration

Timeline App  (animated illustration providing feedback in the process of interaction with the interface)

tubik_studio_weather-icons

Weather Icons Presentation  (flat illustration setting the theme and featuring location in the interface)

horsy_animation_logo_tubik_studio

Lion browser logo (logo designed as part of the general brand strategy)

interface animation illustrated

Saily App screen animations (flat animated illustration as an informative and stylistic part of the app interface)

tubik studio magazine design

Muscles Magazine (graphic design for sports periodical publication)

UI animation pull down

Pull Down — Space Ship (animated graphic design element used in the interface and enhancing microinteraction)

ravel-app-tutorial-tubik-stu

Travel App Tutorial (explanatory illustration for app tutorial)

pikachu poster graphic design

Pikachu Poster (graphic design for small printed forms such as posters and cards)

Even this small set of examples shows how diverse the tasks for a graphic designer can be, from simple stroke icons (which are actually not so simple as they seem to be) to complex detailed illustrations or full development of all the elements of brand identity.

The general aim of all these efforts, though, is to make the image or another graphic element meaningful and symbolic, communicating to the customer or user in a fast and efficient way. Improving communication, making it more impressive, expressive, and diverse stands behind most samples of different graphic assets.

Qualities and skills

Some requirements for the specialists in this sphere of work and art include the following:

  • technical artistic skills and preferably qualification in some sort of visual art
  • artistic talent and creative nature
  • good artistic eye and feeling of harmony
  • ability to draw well
  • good skills in composition and visual analysis
  • ability to work on the analysis of the target audience and possible options for communication with it
  • ability to apply different techniques of drawing and painting, preferably both with manual and digital tools
  • ability to learn and self-improve all the time as the sphere is extremely dynamic and diverse etc.

graphic designer

Can anyone be a graphic designer?

This is one more question actively discussed on Quora and we also took part in the discussion. let’s review the thoughts.

Physically any person, with hands and eyes working properly, is able to try himself or herself in the sphere of graphic design. As well as anyone who is able to write can try writing, and anyone able to communicate can try, let’s say, management or teaching. In any sphere, there always is a chance to become successful (or not) if you have the necessary basic physical abilities. However, it can often be not enough to become professional and efficient in this field.

Being based on the diverse experience of communication with graphic designers, it is easy to see that to become a professional and bring home the bacon with the efforts in the sphere of graphic design, the person needs to have a number of characteristics. And first of them, as for any creative job, are passion, talent, ability to work hard and readiness for constant learning and self-improvement. Having all these traits, the person will be able to practice necessary skills, to master needed software, to gain the solid basis of theoretic knowledge and so on . Behind the passion we mean sheer and sincere interest to the field of design and feeling it as the source of inspiration and ambition. Without it, designers are able to solve the tasks and provide the results, but they will be technical, without any soul and heart. Book without a soul is just a set of words. Image without a soul is a set of shapes and colors. Communication without a soul is just a set of sentences. Design without a soul is just a set of features. To breathe in the life into all of them, the passion of the creator is a key factor.

graphic design illustration

However, with the words said above you can get caught into a trap. Passion which is being talked about is not something that just strikes you one day and tells you «Stand up and go to design». In most cases passion is like appetite: it comes when the process starts, when you try and feel that THIS is something you would like to do and grow in. Even more, there are many professionals who got into deep and sincere passion for their craft in the process of improving their skills or accomplishing the projects.

No doubt, it’s possible to become a graphic designer only through hard work: the person will get the technical ability and will be able to accomplish the tasks requiring, perhaps, lower level of creativity. And in this process people sometimes open great interest and particular talents needed to achieve high results and appreciation in the sphere of graphic design.

One more thing to mention is that the job of graphic designer (again, as any other creative work) sometimes looks so romantic, inspirational, bright and deeply creative that people do not see hard and thorough work with developing some small details over and over again, with tons of iterations and great effort of creating not only good-looking but also effective and meaningful design. This job is not just the firework of bright emotions, creativity, inspiration, self-realization and happiness. It is also hours of search, sketching, polishing, staring at computer screen with non-seeing eyes, communication with clients, keeping the deadlines and guidelines. The ability to combine all those sides of design reality is one more vital skill to make a successful professional.

graphic designer illustrator

So, summing up, we tend to answer: no, not anyone can be a graphic designer. But everyone can try if he or she wishes. This attempt in any case will be the gain as for someone, it will open the door to the diverse world of graphic design, while for others it will close that door opening the others at the same time and giving experience, which is anyway useful.

This topic is so deep that one post is, for sure, not enough to cover all the aspects. We are going to tell more in detail about all the directions of graphic design in our further articles, meanwhile welcome to read in detail about the functional potential of illustrations in UI. Stay tuned!

design4users-quote-illustration

Useful Reading

Flat Design. History and Modern Practices

Design Glossary: Basic Color Terminology

Functional Art: 10 Big Reasons to Apply Illustrations in UI Design

State of the Art: 15 Creative Graphic Design Concepts

Illustration Case Study: Winter Olympics Illustration Step-by-Step

How to Create Catchy Flat Illustrations: Designer’s Tips

Small Item, Big Impact: Types of UI Icons

6 Creative Stages of Design for Branding

Creative Stages of Logo Design

Originally written for Tubik Blog

Сообщение Graphic Design. Communication via Art появились сначала на Design4Users.

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