In recent days I have often found myself reflecting on the technological revolution in graphic design. Starting from the invention of the movable type printing press in 1453 by Gutenberg up to today, with very powerful computers, 3D printers, interactive screens, very powerful software, etc.
Why is graphic design directly related to technological development?
The short answer is this: you can’t talk about graphics without talking about the technological tools that allow you to create graphics.
As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, graphics were born and exist thanks to tools. From when man painted in caves and used his fingers as “tools”, through the invention of writing a few decades ago, the codification of alphabets, the invention of Gutenberg’s movable type printing press, the creation of lithographic techniques, photographs, fonts, rotational printing, collages, computers with graphic interfaces, graphics software,…
What do you think graphics would be like today without all this? Nothing, exactly. It wouldn’t exist, just like everything else that surrounds us in the Western world wouldn’t exist. So, graphics are inextricably linked to technological development.
In particular, the more technology develops, the more graphic design develops.
The problem (or not, depending on your point of view) is that technology is evolving ever more rapidly and graphics, since they are inextricably linked to it, evolve with it and at the same speed.
Graphics have changed more in the last 15 years than they have in the previous 50.
Well, yes. That’s because technology has also changed more in the last 15 years than it has in the previous 50. That is, the technological innovations between, say, 2000 and 2015 are clearly and indisputably bigger, more numerous, and more exciting than the technological innovations that occurred between 1950 and 2000.
And the great thing is that the technological innovations that occurred between 1950 and 2000 are incredibly bigger, more numerous and more exciting than those that occurred, for example, in the previous 100 years, that is, between 1850 and 1950.
This basic graph shows how far human technology has progressed to date and at what rate of growth: Don’t you believe it? I don’t want to list all the innovations that have occurred in the last 150 years, I would bore you and this article would become an almost infinite list.
As a demonstration of this theory of mine, however, I want to ask you to try to identify yourself with the designers of 100, 50, 20 years ago.
At the end of the 19th century, a poster was hand-painted and reproduced by lithography in series (for the first time in history, art became graphic) by great masters such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec or Alfons Mucha. Although at the time this could be considered an incredible innovation, capable of changing the entire economy of art, and giving birth to the graphic sector, today, thinking of producing a poster in this way is crazy. Unless you want to do something very slow and very expensive.
Then came photography, came photomontages in the early decades of the 20th century and came fonts suitable for photomontages such as, for example, Futura. Techniques improved, speed increased as did the productivity and the ability to spread a single image or poster.
In the meantime, techniques are improving, slowly but ever more quickly, because technology is evolving slowly but ever more quickly.
Let’s jump a few decades and we arrive at the 80s, in particular 1984, the Macintosh comes out , which allows you to interact, for example, with fonts (but not only) through graphical interfaces. It is one of the tools that begin to make us understand how much the “machine” can transform the work of the graphic designer for the better.
Right on this wave of technological innovations, Photoshop arrives in 1990, computers are getting better and better with color screens, operating systems available to everyone. And then also the birth of the Internet, where you can publish and send via email images and drawings.
And the Internet, like other previous innovations, is changing everything in the world of graphics and design!
From the beginning of the diffusion of the Internet in the Western world in the mid-1990s to the advent of the so-called Web 2.0 is a snap of the fingers when compared to the previous decades between the invention of photography and that of the computer, for example.
Here come forums, chats, blogs and mailing lists and then, above all, come social networks. A graphic image (to say poster has almost no meaning anymore) published online can reach millions of people in a few hours. This is exactly what viral marketing plays on, for example, that is, advertising campaigns that aim to go viral in a few hours on social media by exploiting the trend of the moment, sometimes even of the day!
The speed of production through the improvement of hardware and software, the speed of diffusion of an image through the Internet and social networks and the improvement of the quality of the graphic elements themselves. Everything has improved in recent years in graphic design thanks to technology. And everything has improved more and more, faster and faster!
Graphics will change much more in the next few years than they have in the last 15.
Technological evolution is ever faster. That’s a fact. How much faster? Much faster than you think, really.
To put it briefly: the technological level of humanity in the coming years will grow neither according to the growth trend of the past nor according to the growth trend of the present but according to an exponential growth trend .
So, what do you say, should we update the previous graph?
We have found that graphics grows in direct proportion, or almost, to technology . Or at least the techniques, tools and technological innovations grow.
The last graph above, then, will be considered applicable not only to technological growth but to growth in the world of graphic design, don’t you think?
But how is this growth of technological innovation manifesting itself? What are these innovations and how are they changing or will they change graphic design?
What are the technological innovations in graphic design that we are experiencing right now?
We have identified 5 current technological innovations in graphic design, those that we are experiencing and whose effects and consequences we are directly observing.
1. Computers with increasingly high-performance hardware
The first of the technological innovations we are experiencing in the world of graphics is almost obvious, right? Computers are increasingly high-performance and powerful. Yes, even if sometimes you feel like throwing everything out of the window when InDesign crashes or you have a dozen tabs open on Chrome.
Those are minor setbacks if you look at the formidable exponential growth of a computer’s processing power.
In this regard, I’ll post a graph that shows this incredible growth in terms of processing power.
And this, obviously, has a heavy impact on graphics and design, because it allows us to support increasingly powerful and dynamic software and keep up with updates to the same, which are increasingly innovative.
The constant innovation and improvement of computers also makes it very difficult to choose a good computer for graphics and keep up with the times.
2. Software increasingly dynamic
Graphics software, in the broadest sense of the term, including 3D modeling and animation in addition to the usual 2D graphics, is increasingly, how can I say… cool!
It allows you to do more and more things and, above all, to do them faster and better. The 2015 update of Adobe Creative Cloud was recently released and there are some who believe that this is the most substantial and innovative update ever, or at least one of the best.
If you think about what you could do, for example, with Photoshop Cs3 or earlier, you are amazed by the improvements of this software in subsequent versions. And we are talking about 2006, not even 10 years ago. We return to the previous discussion: we are always progressing better and faster.
3. Graphics tablets and interactive screens
This is the mega-innovation in the field of 2D graphics in recent years. Graphics tablets have gone from being an elite tool, that only highly paid artists or graphic designers from huge agencies could afford, to being a peripheral that anyone can buy just like any professional keyboard or mouse.
Today a graphics tablet with average potential and for amateur use can be purchased for around 50 euros/dollars. The same thing will surely happen with interactive screens, that is, graphics tablets incorporated into screens. In practice, these interactive screens allow you to draw and design with the pen directly on the screen with monstrously high levels of precision.
4. 3D Printers
Along with interactive displays, the other innovation that is shaking up the world of design and graphics (to a lesser extent) is the continuous improvement of 3D printing technology. It is certainly one of the fastest growing technological niches. The technology is improving more and more and the costs of 3D printing are decreasing more and more.
Many speculate that one day anyone, even those who are not designers, will be able to print any object at home, independently, by downloading a three-dimensional vector file and clicking on print, just like with traditional printing.
In addition to the decrease in costs, another aspect that is constantly improving is the speed of printing. In the beginning, it took hours to produce an object. Today, little by little, the time taken is decreasing more and more, making it increasingly advantageous.
5. Virtually unlimited resources
I haven’t read this anywhere, but one of the aspects that is substantially changing the world of graphic design is the massive spread of resources for making graphics. Almost every day I receive emails or read posts on social media promoting FREE fonts, mockups, Photoshop actions, textures, patterns and much more.
This is an aspect that, even if it doesn’t seem like it, is changing the world of design enormously.
On the one hand, it contributes to the devaluation of the medium-low range of the economic world of graphic production, on the other, it contributes to the spread of knowledge and possibilities to anyone in the world.
Everyone sees it as they want, I, personally, am very positive from this point of view: those who want to continue making quality things, certainly don’t use freebies. Don’t worry, there is still a quality market around the world!
How can we prepare for the changes that will come?
If technology, computers, software, the world of the internet are constantly changing and updating, how do you prepare yourself as a designer? How do you remain a professional and work?
There are two things for a designer to do:
- When everything is changing, you must study what does not change.
- When everything is changing, you have to try to constantly update yourself.
Studying what doesn’t change
One way to always be prepared for change, even if it seems absurd, is to study what does not change, and to have a solid basic knowledge.
By “what doesn’t change” in design, I mean all the basic aspects that contribute to the formation of a designer.
So the study of colors and color theory, the study of shapes and gestalt, the study of typography, how fonts work and how people react to colors, shapes and typography. And don’t forget a good basic knowledge of drawing techniques and creating effective sketches. A little study of the history of design and graphics doesn’t hurt either.
In short, the stronger and more consolidated the knowledge base, the more prepared one is to apply all this knowledge in different ways.
The more basic knowledge you have, the more flexible you become in the world of work and adaptable to new technologies!
In fact, it is always this knowledge that will allow you to understand, not how to use a program – that’s what tutorials, guides and manuals exist for – but how to use a software to build and design something that works.
This basic knowledge will allow you not only to learn how to use a new computer or a graphics tablet but to understand how to use them to create and share quality graphic projects.
Constantly update yourself
The second thing to do as a designer to keep up with the times and avoid being replaced in the future by some robot is to update yourself. Constantly update yourself.
The life of a designer is the life of an eternal student , of someone who always continues to seek new information, of someone who continues to be tirelessly curious about news and changes. ( tweet me! )
But how to do it?
Here are some ways to stay constantly updated on what is happening not only in the world of design and graphics, but also in technology and the web, because we have seen how these aspects are of fundamental importance for the world of graphic design.
- Read books and blogs
- Follow the right people
- Look at other people’s projects
- Participate in online discussions
- Use a positive (and proactive) attitude.
Curiosity, being positive about new things, being open to new things, new technological revolution in graphic design, new tools and new trends is incredibly useful to stay up to date and not be “replaced by robots”.