I’ve tried countless ways to explain to my parents what it is but they always think it’s something related to handing out newspaper or cleaning old posters. Please help I don’t know what to tell them anymore.
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Show them the work you create?
Pick up things around the house that have been designed. A package of tea, a magazine, a book cover (and the inside layout as well), a birthday card, a sales flyer, a piece of mail from a political candidate, a newspaper.
and that’s just the print aspect. Also, every web page, every web ad, every logo, online or on the side of a truck.
I like to explain it as visual communication. Just point to anything that’s been designed and remind them every single company needs collateral designed
In the words of the “[Good Design, Bad Design](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE_ZuNp1CTI)” series on Youtube by DesignDoc (channel about videogames), it’s
>visual communication. Applied to videogames, it’s: menus, UI, UX, camera work, color choice, font choice, animation, character design. *Presentation of information.*
I haven’t been able to find a more succinct summary.
When you pass a new store sign, point and say “Hey!! I could make that and put it up!”, when you pass a dump truck, or a truck with a logo on the side… do the same thing. That’s graphic design. Making someone’s business logo. Making stickers, making the signs for their vehicles, their windows, their light up signs, the logo that goes on T-shirts… banners.. etc.
As a graphic designer, I still find it hard to describe lol.
Graphic design is when you use art principles to make images (graphics) that are normally used digitally or in print.
In a more practical sense, graphic design is all around you. The prints on your clothes, billboards and other ads, packaging, fonts and logos are all products of graphic design. You can probably look at your surroundings and find at least a dozen examples of graphic design, starting with the visuals of this app.
Just use examples like a client gives an artist a design brief and the artist works to manifest their vision; corporate identities/logos, magazine layouts, the visual elements of websites.. etc.
I like to call it “art with a purpose”. It’s a super broad stroke but it’s easy to elaborate from that.
Instead of “handing out newspapers”, graphic design can be deciding how wide the columns of text are, how wide the sheet of paper it’s printed on is and how long, how big and across what columns a picture for an article is placed.
Pick up any package of goods from the kitchen and tell them graphic design is the decision which chose the colors on the box, where the brands logo was placed, the style of the lettering that was used, and any other pictures or images that are on the box.
Graphic design incorporates color theory, visual placement, and other things, that makes something appealing to its target audience to make them want it.
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