What is Graphic Design?
Graphic design is the artwork layer: key art, poster systems, campaign graphics, illustration, maps, ad creative and the asset systems behind a launch. Where brand design builds the system, graphic design makes the pieces that live inside it and carry it into the loud parts of the year. Most of the work is designing for crops you did not choose, since every platform will resize you without asking.
Graphic Design is one of the disciplines under Branding.
Who needs Graphic Design?
You have a launch coming and a folder of assets that were each made separately. Or you have key art that works in one place and gets rebuilt by hand for every new platform. This is the discipline that produces most of what your audience actually sees, which makes it worth systemizing rather than commissioning piece by piece.
Often paired with
Brand Design
Logos, marks, type and color, built to survive every size they will meet.
View discipline →Motion Design
Type, graphics and transitions that make a video feel made rather than assembled.
View discipline →Collateral
Packaging, decks, print and the physical things your brand arrives on.
View discipline →