When you want to communicate something, how would you go about it? Perhaps you could communicate your message verbally; you might tell individuals one at a time, perhaps use a loudspeaker to tell a group of people or even the radio to tell a whole community. However, if you were to place an ad in a newspaper, make a poster or a flyer, set up a webpage, hand out a business card or type a letter you would be using a form of visual communication. Another name for this method of communication is graphic design.

Graphic design is often associated with computers and computer-based images but graphic designers also work with illustrations, photography, textures, colours and letterforms; otherwise known as typography, to produce print-based design as well as web-based design. Using all of these different elements, and the space around them, the designer can communicate a visual message to an audience.

Graphic Design has a profound impact on our everyday lives. It's hard to imagine how much graphic design surrounds and influences us but everything, from the packaging on your cereal box to your bus timetable or the maps on your GPS, it's the work of a graphic designer. How about the magazines you read, the billboards at the train station or the neon-signs on the top of your office building? TV adverts, movie posters, the funky T-shirt you just bought. And of course, this website you're looking at right now – all of these things and much more are the work of a graphic designer who's role it is to inform, stimulate, identify, persuade and interact with you in the most effective and visually appealing way possible.