Graphic design, the carefully planned arrangement of visual images and printed text, can convey both meaning and message. As they tempt consumers, communicate political messages, and reflect social concerns, these boldly crafted, iconic images have been among mankind’s most effective forms of communication.

In the late 18th century the use of printed text and images to deliver messages and ideas proliferated as literacy rates began to rise, paper became more available, and printing technologies improved. Two forces—one political, the other commercial—particularly influenced the increasing prevalence of graphic design. As political revolutions in the late 18th and 19th centuries brought greater freedoms of expression to many parts of the world, communicators expressed their opinions and sentiments on paper in the forms of broadsides and posters that could be widely distributed. Social unrest, military confrontations, and reform movements added to the increasing use and display of visual communication throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

The explosive use of advertising in the 19th and 20th centuries also stimulated the use of graphic design to convey messages. Manufacturers and merchants, buoyed by industrial and commercial growth, realized the need to advertise products in order to dominate an increasingly competitive marketplace. Marketing goods on paper translated into selling goods in the marketplace. By the early 20th century, professionalization of the graphic designer resulted from growing demands for well-conceived, well-designed visual messages. Since that time, professional designers have been responsible for the print ads, package designs, and commercials that have shaped our society and represented its cultural movements. No longer a static medium, graphic design in the 21st century has become a sophisticated means of communication, due in large part to the Internet, which has transformed texts and images through movement and interactivity. Technology once again has been a driving force for change.

Graphic Design—Get the Message! looks at graphic design from four themed areas: typography and early printing; commerce and graphic design; political and social messages; and the creative process. Through the use of posters, broadsides, package designs, paintings, decorative arts, historical photographs, and computer interactives, these four themes will address topics such as technology and innovation; manufacturing and commercial growth; changing aesthetics; typography; designers and the growth of the design profession; and social and political expression in graphic work. Graphic designs, objects, and the history of design work from the Albany area will be used to address broader issues of national and international significance. As it examines technological, commercial, aesthetic, and social factors, Graphic Design—Get the Message! will reveal not only how the field has changed over the years, but also how it has changed us.

Throughout its run, the exhibition will also feature a number of lectures and demonstrations by graphic designers and scholars in the field. Click here for more information.

This exhibition and public programs are funded by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Exhibition planning was funded by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.
 

Above (Left to Right): (1) Fight or Buy Bonds, Third Liberty Loan, c. 1917, illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy; (2) It Steadies and Sustains WRIGLEY'S, c. 1917, The Gugler Litho Co., ink and paper; (3) Stop the Plant poster, Woody Pirtle, 2004, silkscreen, courtesy of Pirtle Design