Becoming a Graphic and Digital Designer: A Guide to Careers in Design, 5th Edition

Part 4Digital Design

In digital design, the word digital is vestigial. To be a “communications” designer these days implies working in digital space with digital formats. We've already examined the impact of digital tools on design practice, design thinking, and design production. Now we will survey the opportunities in the digital arena(s) and how others have mastered them. While a dwindling majority of graphic designers still describes their practice as “problem solving,” a growing number of new- comers have declared that instead of looking for solutions to problems, they are going to be designing programs for solutions.

Not a breakthrough idea, this concept was pioneered 50 years ago by Swiss typographer Karl Gerstner, who wrote Designing Programmes, a book about systems in graphic design. It features four illustrated essays on a systematic methodology that is particularly relevant today, in the context of the most recent developments in computational design.

So, why all the excitement?

The big difference between then and now is the technology. Whereas back in 1964, when Gerstner was articulating his principles, the most advanced piece of engineering was the ill-fated Picturephone, today people, but also products, events, and services are digitally intertwined into a vast substrate of pulsating data.

The designers interviewed in this chapter all enthusiastically embrace technologically driven interconnectivity as the source of endless creative opportunities and career building. ...