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Communication design is a mixed discipline between design and information-development concerned with how media communicate with people. A communication design approach is concerned with developing the message and aesthetics in media. It also creates new media channels to ensure the message reaches the target audience. Due to overlapping skills, some designers use graphic design and communication design interchangeably.
Communication design can also refer to a systems-based approach, in which the totality of media and messages within a culture or organization are designed as a single integrated process rather than a series of discrete efforts. This is done through communication channels that aim to inform and attract the attention of the target audience. Design skills must be used to create content suitable for different cultures and to maintain a pleasurable visual design. These are crucial pieces of a successful media communications kit.<ref name=":1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Within the Communication discipline, the emerging framework for Communication as Design focuses on redesigning interactivity and shaping communication affordances.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Software and applications create opportunities for and place constraints on communication. Recently, Guth and Brabham examined the way that ideas compete within a crowdsourcing platform, providing a model for the relationships among design ideas, communication, and platform.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The same authors have interviewed technology company founders about the democratic ideals they build into the design of e-government applications and technologies.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Interest in the Communication as Design framework continues growing among researchers.
OverviewEdit
Communication design seeks to attract, inspire, and motivate people to respond to messages and to make favorable impact.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref> This impact oriented toward the objectives of the commissioning body, which can be either to build a brand or move sales. It can also range from changing behaviors, to promoting a message, to disseminating information. The process of communication design involves strategic business thinking, including using market research, creativity, problem-solving, and technical skills and knowledge such as colour theory, page layout, typography, and creating visual hierarchies.<ref name=":0" /> Communication designers translate ideas and information through a variety of media. In order to establish credibility and influence audiences through the communication, communication designers use both traditional tangible skills and the ability to think strategically in design and marketing terms.
The term communication design is often used interchangeably with visual communication, but it maintains a broader meaning that includes auditory, vocal, touch, and olfactory senses.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Examples of communication design practices include information architecture, editing, typography, illustration, web design, animation, advertising, ambient media, visual identity design, performing arts, copywriting and professional writing skills applied in the creative industries.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
EducationEdit
Students of communication design learn how to create visual messages and broadcast them to the world in new and meaningful ways. In the complex digital environment around us, communication design has become a powerful means of reaching out to the target audiences. Therefore, it expands its focus beyond user-experiences to user-networks.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Students learn how to combine communication with art and technology. The communication design discipline involves teaching how to design web pages, video games, animation, motion graphics, and more.
Communication Design has content as its main purpose. It must achieve a reaction, or get a customer to see a product in a genuine way to attract sales or effectively communicate a message. Communication design students are often Illustrators, Graphic Designers, Web designers, Advertising artists, Animators, Video Editors, Motion graphic artists, Printmakers, and Conceptual Artists. The term communications design is fairly general considering its interdisciplinary practitioners operate within various mediums to get a message across.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
SubdisciplinesEdit
- Advertising
- Art direction
- Brand management
- Content strategy
- Copywriting
- Creative direction
- Graphic design
- Illustration
- Industrial design
- Information architecture
- Information graphics
- Instructional design
- Marketing communications
- Performing arts
- Presentation
- Technical writing
- Visual arts
Visual communication designEdit
Visual communication design is the design working in any media or support of visual communication.<ref>MUNARI, Bruno. Design and visual communication. Chronicle Books, 2006</ref><ref>WOLLNER, Alexandre. Visual Design 50 years. Cosac & Naify, 2003</ref><ref>LANGENFELDS, Ranya. Visual design. TEAME, 1997</ref><ref name=":4">Template:Cite book</ref> This is considered by some to be more accurate alternative terminology to cover all types of design applied in communication. It uses a visual channel for message transmission, reflecting the visual language inherent to some media.<ref>LEEUWEN, Theo Van. Reading images: the grammar of visual design. Routledge, 2006 - Pg. 4</ref><ref>FRASCARA, Jorge. Communication design: principles, methods, and practice. Allworth Communications, Inc., 2004 - Pg. 4</ref><ref>GARRET, Lillian. Visual design: a problem-solving approach. Michigan: R. E. Krieger Pub. Co., 1975.</ref> Unlike the terms graphic design (graphics)<ref name=":3">MEGGS, Philip B. A history of graphic design. Michigan, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992 - Pg.xiii Preface</ref><ref name=":4"/> or interface design (electronic media),<ref name=":4"/> it is not limited to support a particular form of content.<ref name=":4"/>
Print media designEdit
Print media design is a graphic design discipline that creates designs for printed media.<ref name=":3" /> Print design involves the creation of flyers, brochures, book covers, t-shirt prints, business cards, booklets, bookmarks, envelope designs, signs, letterheads, posters, CD cover, print media design templates, and more.<ref name=":1" /> The goal of print design is to use visual graphics to communicate a specific message to viewers.