How has Technology Allowed Graphic Design to Flourish?

How has Technology allowed Graphic Design to flourish?

Graphic Design used to be a hard task. It involved hours of coming up with a concept to start with, going through many different iterations of the design and when finally happy with the design, going through the many, many man hours to print the design for larger use and as a brand. This was done through a technique referred to as screen printing.

However, today we have the technology to print these designs for larger use and as a brand that even small businesses are able to create and print a recognisable brand from the ground up and it is all thanks to the technology that has allowed graphic design to flourish. This is from multiple programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator that are readily available to anyone as well as websites like VistaPrint that allow cheap and easy business card design to anyway that requires one. For this project I have focused on three artists; Johan Thรถrnqvist, Vincent Bourilhon and Olly Moss.

Johan Thörnqvist Johan’s work revolves around taking a scenery and adding characters in different situation around the piece. Each piece focuses on a specific object as the focal point of each piece with smaller things happening in or around the background. In one piece, he focuses on an old lamp that was no longer used and turned it into a small house. His work usually takes a scene and adding cartoon like styles and objects to the scene. Sometimes it is complex such as a lamp becoming a floating water city or it can be simple such as a giant peering through a window.

Advancement in technology have not only allowed Johan to learn how to create this type of work but is so readily available that he is able to create so many pieces in a similar style as these images come from his “Pictures from my Phone” collection. Ease of access to application like Photoshop have allowed Johan to take a dull block of flats and turn into a fort straight out of a child’s imagination. Johan also adds more brightness to the pictures giving more life to the piece and making the mood of the piece more cheerful in general. Many of the pieces from the “Pictures from my Phone” collection seem to try to recapture that childlike wonder of imagining that one thing can become a million different things.

Vincent Bourilhon Vincent Bourilhon is a Parisian artist who originated in photography. Vincent Bourilhon’s art focuses on taking a photo of a scene and then enhances it in Photoshop either by adding to the scene or manipulating what is already in the scene. This is either done by doing something small such as changing how smoke appears and changing how a wire bends or as complex as making a floating room. Vincent has worked for several companies, including MyMajorCompany, Sony Distribution, Opera Grand Avignon, or Derhy Kids. His work has been the subject of several exhibitions: in 2014, he was the guest of Happy Happening organized by aufeminin.com, and has also been invited trophy influencers Tribway. His personal work reflects his admiration for the discipline.Through graphics and digital retouching, he managed to build an imaginary world, very cinematic, on the border between dream and reality.

For Vincent, technology has allowed him to create surreal pieces of work that appear to be in a dream-like state such as the floating person just above. These pieces are created by a means of photomanipulation in Photoshop with the use of several pictures. Vincent would take these pictures and string them together in a single piece to create these cinmatic images. However, not all of his work use multiple pictures. The one pictured above could possbily have been just a single picture, using photoshop to create the smoke effects as well as using photo shop to create the continents of the world appear as if they are being formed by the smoke that is rising out of the coffee mug.

Olly Moss Olly Moss born on January 24th 1987 is an English artist, graphic designer and illustrator who is best known for his reimagining of movie posters. Notable pieces include a commissioned piece by Marvel Entertainment executives Craig Kyle and Kevin Feige for the cast of Thor as well as the box cover artwork for the video game Resistance 3. In his Rolling Roadshow collection, he focused mainly on re-creating classic film posters but focused on using only 3 different colours; white, black and orange. The posters themselves show parts of the stories of the film or show an iconic moment from that film such as in the film Rocky where Rocky runs up a large flight of stairs and celebrates.

Advancement in technology has allowed Olly to share his work all other the world. Since his work is completly Illustrated and recreations of popular movies, Olly’s work is more likely not to be published in a gallery comapred to Vincent Bourilhon and Johan ThÜrnqvist. Since putting his work onto the world wide web however, his work has been seen by thousands upon thousands of people. New technology has even allowed him to advance into other fields such as Games Design as he has had a hand in designing the world and visual style of the 2016 video game FireWatch. Technology and ease of access has allowed him to sell a lot of his artwork as posters online in his own personal store.

Conclusion

Whilst an advancement in technology has allowed these artists to flourish it is not a single factor alone that has done this. There is also the aspect of ease of access as well as how small the world has become, as in how easy it is to connect with people all around the world in the click of a button. New technology is easier to get a hold of and is a lot cheaper as well as the applications that come with them.

An ease of access to technology as well as the application used for digital arts have allowed artists all around the globe to be noticed and make a career of their work, not just the three artists discussed here.

Computers can be brought almost anyway from online sites like Amazon, to stores specialising in computers like PC world to even going down the street to your local supermarket to buy a medium-end PC has become the norm. Digital Media applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign can bought online or in certain stores. Adobe even offers free 30 day demos of these products for anyone to use.

Ease of access to applications and technology has allowed amateur artists to flourish.

A smaller world has also allowed artists to flourish whether they be amateur or professional. Many websites such as Tumblr, Behance and Pinterest allow people to share their creation to the world and get feedback from anyone about them. Sites like these allow artists to gain a following so that they can get noticed within their industry or even do it as a hobby whilst looking for work, finishing college or university and then use what they have created to use in a portfolio to move onto something else.

BIBLOGRAPHY http://endoftheroadfestival.com/artist/screen-printing/ www.vincent-bourilhon.com/ www.snarlik.se/ www.ollymoss.com/ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/09/olly-moss-the-savior-of-movie-posters.html http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/16/new-resistance3-trailer-inspired-by-olly-moss-art/