Top 7 Types of Graphic Design with Examples [2024 Edition]
Greetings to the vibrant pace of graphic design! It’s like a game-changer for visuals. You can find creative designs anywhere, from catchy brand logos on your favorite t-shirt to the Advertisements that grab your attention! Graphic design is a field that contains multiple different subfields in it!
Before we explore the different major types of graphic design with their separate examples, let’s discuss the topic “What is Graphic design?”. Graphic design is applying creative visuals to tell a story and convey messages and concepts.
View the different types of graphic design as the magical power that brings life to your boring t-shirts, coffee mugs, and posters through innovative designs and vibrant colors, images, and fonts.
So, if you are a newcomer and want to start your career in this highly demanding industry, you must know the difference between various types of graphic design first. In this blog post, we will explore seven different types of graphic design, along with examples and job roles.
Grab your creative hat and thoroughly read this blog post to clear your understanding!
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7 Different Types of Graphic Design
Graphic design is viewed as an umbrella term of different sub-fields. We are going to discuss the seven different types of graphic design subfields below, with suitable examples and job roles you can apply for!
1. Advertising/ Marketing Graphic Design
In the field of advertising and marketing, graphic design plays a significant role. Graphic design is the magical medium that helps audiences with attractive infographics or visuals such as images, fonts, colors, and texts.
Graphic designers who work under an advertising agency or marketing department assist them in bringing life to the campaign and making the campaign successful. Both advertising graphic design and marketing graphic design serve two different purposes. You can not deny the role design plays in generating leads and improving brand awareness.
The advertising graphic design serves the purpose of creating visually appealing billboards and posters and designing catchy graphics for flyers or magazines.
On the other hand, marketing graphic design serves the purpose of creating email newsletters, visually engaging blog posts, and social media posts to keep the audience engaged!
These are the major reasons why advertising graphic design is considered one of the major types of graphic design.
Examples of Advertising/ Marketing Graphic Design
One of the major examples of advertising graphic design is making appealing email newsletter templates and banners.
You can also design animations and illustrations for social media campaigns, banners, ads, or posts.
You can design images and make infographics for white papers and blog posts.
You can also design colorful print advertisements for billboards, magazines, newspapers, and brochures.
You can also consider the above ad for Coca-Cola. This ad is one of the most popular ones of all, as it clearly conveys the idea Coca-Cola wanted to highlight: Coca-Cola Offers Refreshments.
Job Roles
- Advertising Designer
- Marketing Designer
- Media Designer
2. UI Graphic Design
The user interface is now a buzzword for the modern industry of graphic and web design. UI design is the systematic method of designing all things in an easy and user-friendly way for the user for their interaction with the device or application.
The major aspect of balancing the interface with effective technical performance. A UI graphic designer offers you a guarantee on how the targeted audience usually reacts or feels to some of the elements of the digital product.
Some of the major skills a UI graphic designer must possess include knowledge of UX/UI principles, elements of interface design, responsive web design, in-depth understanding of color, texts, fonts, contrast, brightness, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills.
UI designers are highly focused on the interaction layers to grab human senses such as hearing, touch, sight, and many more!
Examples of UI Graphic Design
- One popular example of UI graphic design is designing the game interface.
- Web page design and application design are also considered UI design.
- Theme design through Shopify or WordPress also comes under the category of UI graphic design.
- Designing dashboards also falls under this broad category.
Job Roles
Graphic designers who specialize in UI design have a working knowledge of games, web applications, and mobile applications. The different types of job roles you can apply for with this UI graphic design specialization include:
- UI Designer
- Brand Designer
- Visual Designer
3. Publication Graphic Design
The publishing industry is witnessing the rapid growth of graphic design, which is still an emerging field in publishing and editing in recent times. This makes publication graphic design different from the other types of graphic design illustrated in this blog post.
Publications are long pieces of work that are strictly published to the general public to convey a message and communicate with a large number of audiences. Publications are categorized under the print medium. In publishing graphic design, the functions involve designing the covers of magazines and books, making appealing typographic designs, finding out text hierarchy and text alignment, and developing the layout of entire pages.
The skills needed to become an expert publication design professional include an in-depth understanding of typesetting, page design, different layouts, typography, composition, and book production process.
Along with these, they should have specialized knowledge in handling Affinity Publisher, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign.
Examples of Publication Graphic Design
- Designing and making creative as well as informative newsletters are the major examples of publication graphic design.
- Consider developing and designing book or magazine covers for this publication, as well as graphic design, among other types of graphic design field.
- You must have a great understanding of typesetting and typography by just adjusting alignment, text spacing, and indentation to guarantee the 100% readability of the conveyed texts.
Job Roles
- Publication Artist/ Designer
- Editorial Designer
- DTP Artist
- Book Designer
- Layout Artist/ Designer
4. Visual Identity/ Brand Design
Have you ever wondered why people are more conscious and fascinated by terms such as brand identity and brand recognition while starting their business?
If you want to stay on top of the competition among other business competitors, then you must build a strong brand identity. A strong brand identity is closely linked to enhanced brand value and also develops an emotional bond with target audiences with a catchy online presence.
A major part of brand identity depends heavily on the factors of visual communication through different design elements like attractive visuals, colors, fonts, layers, imageries, and logos. The brand is highlighted with attention-grabbing slogans and taglines.
Brand identity/ visual identity graphic designers are the ones who are hired to recreate or rebuild a brand that already exists.
The essential skills a visual identity designer/ brand graphic designer must hold include a detailed understanding of branding principles like clarity, consistency, authenticity, and storytelling.
Examples of Visual identity/ Brand Graphic Design
- The most popular brand graphic design is the most appealing logo of McDonald’s, where the yellow ‘M’ is highlighted on a red background or the iconic logo of Apple to grab the attention of the viewers.
- Also, you can consider the selection of different brand colors or palettes like Starbucks choosing the white color palettes.
Job Roles
- Visual identity designer
- Logo designer
- Brand designer
- Visual branding specialist
- Brand identity designer
5. Packaging Graphic Design
Packaging design is all about the eye-catching graphic designs created on the product package or outer body that make a viewer interested in the product. You can not ignore the significant role of packaging design in building a brand’s story.
The products we generally use in our everyday lives are all differently packed as they hold unique brands as well as visual identities because of their different ingredients. Successful packaging design is the game changer in this graphic design industry which offers the product “Sheft impact” and enhances the sales rate of the business.
A packaging designer is assigned the task of creating a unique visual identity for a product. They have to keep in mind that the product must compete with its competitors while clearly showing the product name, ingredients, and reasons for use.
The major skills one packaging designer should hold include expertise in 3D packaging design tools, understanding of production and print methods, and principles of structural designs. Packaging designers develop ideas, generate mockups, and build files that fit for printing.
Examples of Packaging Graphic Design
- Examples include design packaging for beverage and food products like packaging cereal boxes, chocolate wrappers, cookie packets, tee bags, or cans.
- I am designing the labels and packaging of skincare and cosmetic brands such as Loreal, Lakme, and Nivea.
- Package designs for toys and one significant example is Barbie.
Job Roles
- Packaging designer
- Packaging product artist
- Packaging graphic designer
- Brand identity designer
6. Environmental Graphic Design
Another popular kind of graphic design, among other different types of graphic design, is environment design, which is related to the design of physical landscapes. The major aim of environmental graphic design is to make a connection between people and their visited places through appealing graphic designs.
Environmental graphic designers are assigned tasks of creating visually attractive designs for wayfinding systems that guide people to a specific place for designing displays or for exhibitions or conferences.
As an environmental graphic designer, you must have skills like having a strong concept of branding, knowledge of exhibit designs, and digital files, blueprints, strong communication skills, and visual sense. Furthermore, the other skills include specialization in wayfinding, designing signage, the idea of architectural designs like spaces, lighting, measurements, and more!
Environmental Graphic design is an umbrella term in which the different fields like graphic, interior, industrial, architectural, and landscape design combine.
Examples of Environmental Graphic Design
- One major example of environmental graphic design is the design of public transport systems.
- The design installations for exhibitions or museums.
- It would help if you did not forget the designs created for shopfronts and murals.
- You can also consider the designs made for display hung outside the departmental stores.
- Designing the interiors of different retail stores.
Job Roles
- Environmental graphic designer
- Exhibition graphic designer
- Wayfinding graphic designer
7. Motion Graphic Design
Motion graphic design is considered one of the most trending types of graphic design that is highly used in the animation industry daily to attract the attention of targeted viewers easily. This specific type of graphic design, among the seven others, usually deals with motion designs, static images, and animation to develop moving designs with attention-grabbing visual effects.
Along with these, they also include imagery and typography, which are widely used in films, television, and other digital media platforms.
Motion graphics are new kinds of designs that can be found in different online platforms generating new areas of possibilities. The field of motion graphic design is rapidly transforming due to the rise of new and advanced technologies and tools.
Motion graphic designers are allowed to explore different opportunities offered through specific types of design with technological advancements. Some of the best motion graphic design software are Cinema 4D, Adobe After Effects, Maya, Adobe Animate, Adobe Premier Pro, and more!
Some major skills a motion graphic designer must hold include the ability to understand the core principles of motion graphics and animation, like timing, staging, stretch, and anticipation.
The other skills are storyboarding, knowledge of color theory, layout, storytelling, and the capability to handle motion graphic design software and more!
Examples of Motion Graphic Design
- The creation of moving graphics and logos or icons for any website are examples of motion graphics.
- Making visually appealing animations and illustrations for games and movies are the most popular examples of motion graphic designs.
Job Roles
- Animator
- Motion Graphic designer
- Visual effect artist/designer
- 3D animator
Wrapping Up,
Do you still have doubts- is graphic design a demanding field or not? Does one flourish in this field? The field of graphic design is evolving rapidly, and there is an emerging demand for qualified and expert graphic designers.
Comprehending the different types of graphic design will guide you in finding the resources you need while looking for some facts to take on a real-client design project. If you really wish to start your professional journey in this sector, it should be a major as well as an essential resource for you.