Graphic Design Resource Guide

Any of various methods used by a company to increase the sales of its products or services or to promote a brand name. Advertising is also used by organizations and individuals to communicate an idea or image, to recruit staff, to publicize an event, or to locate an item or commodity.

Aesthetics, or aesthetic, is often used as a synonym for art in general. But then we might ask what art is. The origin of the word is helpful here. In ancient Greek, aisthesis (the root of ‘aesthetic’) means ‘feeling’ and corresponds to the German, Gefühl, a term which Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) used to evoke the idea of inner feeling. Art would then be the sphere where inner feeling is evoked, rather than being the sensations evoked by an external source.

[Gr.,=beautiful writing], skilled penmanship practiced as a fine art. See also inscription; paleography.
European Calligraphy
In Europe two sorts of handwriting came into being very early. Cursive script was used for letters and records, while far more polished writing styles, called uncials, were used for literary works. Both styles can be seen in papyrus fragments from the 4th cent. B.C. After the 1st cent. A.D. the development of the half uncial or minuscule letter from the Roman capital gave rise to an extraordinarily beautiful and long-lasting calligraphy.

Each color has three characteristics (see Fig. 1)
It has a hue or color name, and is a part of a color group such as blue or blue-greenish, or orange or yellow-orange.
It has a value or lightness, so that a pale yellow would have high value or lightness, and as the lightness is reduced the color becomes darker until it eventually becomes black.

3. It has a saturation, which is also called the chroma or intensity. A true red would have full saturation, and as the saturation is reduced the color becomes lighter until it eventually becomes white.

Color is usually described in terms of a fixed set of color relationships. For an artist, the simplest color relationship is represented in the color wheel of 12 colors made by mixing the three primary colors of red, yellow and blue (see Fig. 2). Each is placed one-third of the distance around the color wheel. These represent the colors that are purest and cannot be created by mixing other colors.

In art, the arrangement of elements within an artwork to give a desired effect, often described as pleasing (unified and appealing to the eye) or expressive (intended to evoke a particular mood, feeling, or idea). The elements of pleasing compositions are usually held together by placing them in an imaginary plan, either a quadrant, sequential, or asymmetrical form. Linear compositions arrange the elements along a diagonal, or a system of radiating or curving lines, or in the layout of a simple geometrical figure such as the triangle.

The computer deeply affects the way today's art is produced, disseminated, and valued. Until recently, images were created through acts of human perception either through skills based on eye-hand coordination or through the lens of copying processes such as photography, cinematic film, or video where what is seen is recorded through various chemical or electronic processes. Increasingly, however, images reside only in the database of a computer, causing a break with the visual means of representation available to artists for creating art since the Renaissance.

Use of computers to display and manipulate information in pictorial form. Input may be achieved by scanning an image, by drawing with a mouse or stylus on a graphics tablet, or by drawing directly on the screen with a light pen.

Computer graphics consists of two steps: describing an image and then displaying it. There are a number of other issues that also come into play with computer graphics (or simply graphics). Is the image an individual one or part of a series of images in an animation? Is the image to be static, or can a computer user interact with a software package to change it? Is the goal of the image to be highly realistic because it will be viewed at length, or is it just to give a quick impression of the scene?

From the 1860s with the creation of the first advertising agencies, to the 1880s when the LINOTYPE and MONOTYPE typesetting machines were developed, the US established a tradition of creative and technical ingenuity that continued throughout the 20th c. The ideals of the ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT in England were embraced by four great US type designers and printers: Daniel Berkeley UPDIKE, Frederic W. GOUDY, Bruce ROGERS and William Addison DWIGGINS.

Any type of picture or decoration used in conjunction with a text to embellish its appearance or to clarify its meaning. Illustration is as old as writing, with both originating in the pictograph. With the advent of printing, the art of hand-painted illumination declined as a means of book illustration.

Means of producing reproductions of written material or images in multiple copies. There are four traditional types of printing: relief printing (with which this article is mainly concerned), intaglio, lithography, and screen process printing. Relief printing encompasses type, stereotype, electrotype, and letterpress. Flexographic printing is a form of rotary letterpress printing using flexible rubber plates and rapid-drying inks.

The terms font and typeface are not quite synonyms. To a professional typesetter, a font is a specific typeface at a specific size. In computing, however, the distinction is often lost because the user can resize any typeface at will. But for the purposes of this article, a typeface is a character set having a particular styled appearance, regardless of size or attributes such as italic or bold. A typefont, or just font, is a typeface of specific size and attribute, such as 12-point italic Helvetica. A point is 1/72 of an inch. Common typefonts used with personal computers are the italic and bold variants of the Times Roman, Arial, Chicago, and Courier New typefaces, but there are literally hundreds of specialized fonts that can be added to the menu of those available for use with word processors, Web browsers, and other software.

The design of letterforms for use as typefaces, and the selection of typefaces for typeset documents. Typefaces are designed and used for a multitude of purposes (eg books, newspapers, stationery, handbills) and for use on various kinds of typesetting equipment, in both print and non-print media (such as film and television).