What Is the Difference Between Graphic Design and Desktop Publishing?
Graphic design and desktop publishing are often used interchangeably but they are, in fact, very different. Why is this important to know? It’s actually pretty simple. As a consumer of marketing services, you need to understand the difference between the two in order to get what you need as well as grasping an understanding of what necessities should be paid for.
What is Graphic Design?
Graphic design is about solving the communication challenges through visual shorthand. Where there is clarity of thought, you’ll reach the essence of communication solutions. This is truly Graphic Design – utilizing a variety of graphical solutions combined with data as well as your imagination and creating art with a purpose. It involves a creative plan that is developed to achieve specific objectives through the use of images, symbols or even words. It is visual communication utilizing your imagination with various graphic elements and tools that tell a story.
Graphic designers usually combine text and images to create and communicate effective messages in the form of logos, brochures, newsletters, posters, signage, websites, email campaigns, ads as well as a variety of other facets of marketing. A graphic designer may do all or almost all of these things; they may even specialize in one or more areas – such as primarily logo design development or website design.
What is Desktop Publishing?
Desktop publishing is a term coined after the development of a specific type of software that is often utilized to combine and rearrange text or images and create digital files. Before the invention of desktop publishing software, the tasks involved in desktop publishing were done manually by a team of various people and involved activities such as typesetting, laying out pages and documents and many of other pre-press tasks. Desktop publishing involves taking an existing template or document created by a designer and placing text and graphics within that document to communicate a message.
Why the Confusion?
Graphic design and desktop publishing are often intertwined, in part because desktop publishing is an activity also used by those who do not have an art directors background. Not everyone who does desktop publishing does graphic design, but most graphic designers are involved in the tasks that desktop publishers partake in, which is the production side of design. Today’s graphic designers usually utilize desktop publishing software and techniques to achieve their or their clients’ goals. While it is true that designers can usually do their own desktop publishing, it is not true of the opposite. Desktop publishers are usually not designers.
How Do I determine What I Need?
Originally, desktop publishing was considered a mechanical process and focused toward production, a lesser activity than graphic design. As important as any design process, it involves knowledge of a bigger picture; the art direction within a page layout design, pagination, production requirements, and all the technical aspects of page layout printing. But the graphic designers job also entails developing a unique process of coming up with original concepts and ideas. And as a graphic designer, they are required to invent a graphical interpretation tailored to the brand, visual and communication goals of the client.
Translation? If you want graphics that are unique and produced specifically for your brand, you need a graphic designer. And while graphic design is more expensive in some cases, it is proportionate to the complexity, experience and time involved in developing graphics and designs that are specifically tailored to your brand, and that truly wow your audience.
However, if you have already had a mediocre brand template created by a designer and simply need the mechanics of desktop publishing done to accomplish your brand goals, then a desktop publisher is in order. Knowing the difference between graphic design and desktop publishing will help provide you with the clarity of thought when approached by a situation regarding the services you need at the appropriate level of cost.
So the next time you are interviewing marketing service providers make sure to ask the question, “Are you a designer or a desktop publisher”. And if they don’t know the answer or the difference, chances are good that they are not designers.
Silva Devarj
Owner, Brand Strategist
