The cheat sheet to startup graphic design roles
How Atalanta reaffirmed her identity as a graphic designer.
Once upon a time in ancient Greece lived Atalanta, an established design heroine. She was known for her divine imagination. Throughout her entire career, she thought of herself as a graphic designer. However, recently, that term started to bother her. The expanding tech industry preferred to speak in terms of visual design over graphic design.
When she told that to an old friend Meleager, a seasoned front-end developer, he chuckled.
“At the beginning of my career I was a programmer, and now I am a developer.” — replied Meleager with a smile. “Conventions change. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes not so. There is no cure for that. Let it go.”
But she couldn’t. After all, it was her professional identity at stake. She needed to understand why and how this change happened — starting from the beginning.
Graphic design
Credit: londonist.com
Encyclopedia Britannica defines graphic design as “the art and profession of selecting and arranging visual elements — such as typography, images, symbols, and colors — to convey a message to an audience.” (1)
According to Philip B. Meggs, arguably the most distinguished graphic design historian, the term itself was coined by typographer W.A. Dwiggins in the 1920s, who wanted to describe the emerging profession that utilizes images, colors and typography to establish visual communication (2). However, some sources attribute it to Frederick H. Meyer, an educator who taught a class at California School of Arts and Crafts in “Graphic Design and Lettering” (3).
Regardless of who was first, what’s pertinent is that both used the same adjective — graphic. Why is that? Well, ‘graphic’ has a long history. It is borrowed from graphic art, a notable graphic design ancestor and for some time the main ‘influencer’ of visual communications. Graphic art is categorized as a branch of fine art which encompasses all (manual) artistic techniques that produce multiple printed artworks (4).
Aside from the rich legacy of ‘graphic’, the main appeal comes from its meaning. It reflects inwards of the profession: it’s not about how the information is consumed — visually, but how it’s designed — graphically. It stands for an artistic method that shapes visual information to fit into two dimensions.
Three basic functions and three core skills
Over the years technology and media have changed tremendously, yet the core of the trade has stayed pretty much the same.
The three basic functions of graphic design still define the field (5):
- to identify,
- to inform and instruct,
- to present and promote.
And the three core skills define its practitioner:
- knowledge of the visual perception principles (6)
- knowledge of color theory
- knowledge of typography
The practitioner: graphic designer
Credit: www.artsy.net
At the end of the 19th century, graphic design practitioners were often labeled as commercial artists (6). Graphic design always had a quirky relationship with art. As a discipline which uses an artistic method, its work is often mistaken for art (academia still sometimes categorizes it as a subset of the applied arts).
However, there is a fundamental difference between the two. While the artist’s goal is to, arguably, evoke the spectator’s emotion based on personal obsession (the art concept), the graphic designer’s focus is to communicate information based on targeted objectives (e.g., a consumer’s needs).
That taps into the very essence of visual communication, the final destination of the practice. Its success wiggles somewhere on a thin rope stretched between the two opposite drivers of human decision-making: rational and emotional (7).
A graphic designer’s job is to find that sweet spot which is emotional enough to resonate at a glance and trigger a consumer’s feelings; and–on the other hand–rational enough to guard that appeal after more detailed observation.
Graphic designers and the Mad Men era
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Marketing hijacked graphic design for its own benefit. Advertising and branding, marketing subsets, recruited graphic designers and exploited the practice as a handy tool in executing visual communications.
Mainly targeting the emotional hemisphere of the consumers’ brain, marketers emphasized two graphic design functions: to present and promote (advertising), and to identify (branding). That approach has spurred graphic designers’ ‘artistic’ ambitions and led to the birth of the art director role (8). A typical art director stereotype — an outstanding talent, egocentric and artistic, highly valued and paid — has become and stayed the aspirational goal of young graphic designers for decades.
That image of an almighty talented individual fit perfectly into the ad industry narrative. Unfortunately, the very same narrative downplayed the importance of teamwork and created an ego-driven culture.
Graphic designers and the rise of Silicon Valley
Credit: Wired magazine, wired.com
The tech industry quickly gained an ambition to snatch graphic designers from advertising.
The nature of Silicon Valley startups was quite different compared to the Mad Men era agencies. While the ad agencies were offering services, tech startups were mostly focused on digital products. The complexity of their products required diverse design skills and harmonious teams. Science replaced ‘art’. Artistically driven individuals (no matter how talented) became a bit obsolete. Their intuition often collided with the empirical reality and their creative process was not flexible enough for an agile collaboration within the broader cross-functional team.
Silicon Valley needed their own graphic designer and their own taxonomy.
A plethora of names have popped up: UI designer, visual designer, brand designer, etc. Unfortunately, the new names have just added to confusion. Even people within the industry have a hard time understanding nuances (e.g., UI vs Visual designer).
Meanwhile, the adjective ‘graphic’ was stigmatized. Graphic designers became outcasts in the tech world. Today, they are almost solely associated with print(ed) advertising, an unfair and unnecessary restriction. Digital technology and media also rely upon the basic functions and core skills of graphic design. Reinventing the wheel just adds to clutter and mystifies the profession, which is straightforward at its core.
‘Graphic designer’ is still the most adequate term to define a practitioner who carries out visual communications. However, the specific contexts of tech and media must be acknowledged. Graphic designers in print and interface design are distant relatives. A holistic taxonomy would benefit everyone. It would help startups to hire appropriate talent, graphic designers to better choose niche career paths, and graphic design to be perceived as a timeless practice associated with visual communication in general, not with a particular medium or technology.
The Cheat Sheet to Startup Graphic Design Roles
The hybrid roles that don’t predominantly require the graphic design core skills are not included here (e.g., product designer).
Web Designer
A web designer is a generalist that dates to an era when the internet was still a toddler. At the time all ‘tech savvy’ (with basic coding skills) graphic designers were labeled as web designers. They were conceptual, visual, and often front-end support for programmers (another outdated term, referring to a generalist software engineer). The term is still in use. However, with the further development of the internet and the complex tasks user interfaces perform today, the web designer has splintered into numerous graphic and non-graphic design roles, such as UX designer, product designer, front-end developer, etc.
Department
Tech/product and Marketing
Role
The role of a web designer is, simply put, to do web design. A bit of an outdated and ambiguous term, it covers everything from the layout and appearance of a website’s content to its execution.
Visual Designer
A visual designer is a graphic designer’s twin wearing a new fancy outfit. Visual design in the internet context probably came along with the first digital design agencies during the web 2.0 era. A need to distinguish visual from arguably nonvisual services (like information architecture or interaction design) birthed a new term for an old role. It was an old role in the sense that it still leveraged the basic functions and core skills of graphic design. However, the term ‘graphic designer’ didn’t fit because of its troubled association with print advertising. Today, the visual designer title is interchangeably used for graphic designers working in marketing (brand designers) and graphic designers working in product (UI designers). Ironically, the ones working in marketing handle the production of both digital and printed assets.
Department
Product and Marketing
Role
The visual designer role is distributed between marketing and product. If in a marketing context, then it’s the equivalent of a brand designer. If on the product side, then it corresponds to the role of a UI designer.
Brand Designer
The expansion of screen devices supercharged the migration of graphic designers from advertising to tech. The Mad Men era client-side graphic designers were seen as mediocre maintainers. The rise of tech giants with their omnipresent and omnipotent charisma have changed that perspective irreversibly. Suddenly, inhouse design roles became appealing. Startup marketing departments wanted to seize the moment and change the role’s name. Once again, the graphic designer title carried a lot of unwanted baggage. The term brand designer quickly arose as a credible replacement. It clearly echoed the role (visual brand asset creation) and it was distinctive enough not to be confused with its UI design peer.
Department
Marketing
Role
Brand designers create and maintain various visual brand assets for different marketing initiatives: offline and online. They act as an inhouse substitute for advertising and branding agencies.
UI (User Interface) Designer
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word interface predates computing devices. In a computing context it was first used in 1964 (9). The UI design’s traceable past starts with another term–GUI (Graphical User Interface). GUI (and arguably GUI design) was popularized by Apple (10). The idea behind the name was to differentiate the ‘textual code’ interface from the ‘graphical’ interface (with icons, typography, illustrations, etc.). Technically, GUI is a part of UI. Even though GUI design would be a more accurate term than UI design, it is interesting that it didn’t stick. Most likely, Apple’s legacy was too strong (or even proprietary), so UI design became the convention. Naturally, the UI design practitioner became a ‘UI designer’. The name is a bit vague, especially when it’s paired with UX (e.g., UX/UI or UI/UX). That’s the main reason why it’s sometimes replaced with a more descriptive title — like visual designer.
Department
Product
Role
A UI designer is a professional responsible for the “look and feel” of the interface. They use brand visual assets (colors, typefaces, icons, etc.) to finalize basic design layouts (wireframes) done by user experience designers.
Atalanta learned that a profession can and should live independently of what we call particular roles. Role titles depend on seniority, skill set, and tech/media. They can represent important nuances in the applications or contexts of the profession. However, it’s the profession itself that carries the weight, and defines the fundamental functions and skills these new titles connect to. With a certain relief, Atalanta concluded that she was still a graphic designer.
(1) Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/graphic-design
(2) A History of Graphic Design. Meggs, Philip B. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, (1983).
(3) “Graphic Design”: A brief terminological history. Paul Shaw Letter Design Blog. https://www.paulshawletterdesign.com/2014/06/graphic-design-a-brief-terminological-history/
(4) Lexikon der graphischen Technik. München: Verlag Dokumentation 1967.
(5) Graphic design: a concise history. Richard Hollis. New York: Thames and Hudson (World of Art), 1994.
(6) Art and Visual Perception. Arnheim Rudolf. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954.
(7) Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman, Daniel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
(8) Graphic design: a concise history. Richard Hollis. New York: Thames and Hudson (World of Art), 1994.
(9) Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/interface
(10) Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/technology/graphical-user-interface
