Design for the disabled
Not every user of your site will be able to take advantage of the graphics you offer on your pages, and a number of users may be visually impaired. One of the beauties of the Web and HTML is the ability to build in "alternate" messages ("ALT" tags in HTML) so that users without graphics capabilities can still understand the function of graphics on your pages. Using specially designed software, blind users can hear (via synthesized speech) the alternate messages you supply along with your graphics, and so will not completely miss the content of your pictures and graphic navigation buttons. If you will be using graphic menu systems for navigation, these text-based alternate menus will be an especially important aid to users without the ability to see your graphics.

A Definition

In a nutshell, graphic design is creating a pleasing layout from text and graphics. That design might be a brochure, a logo, a Web page, or an advertisement. The list doesn't end there either.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook defines graphic artists:

Graphic artists use a variety of print, electronic, and film media to create art that meets a client's needs.

The process and art of combining text and graphics and communicating an effective message in the design of logos, graphics, brochures, newsletters, posters, signs, and any other type of visual communication. Today's graphic designers often use desktop publishing software and techniques to achieve their goals.

Graphics design is the creation of visual media, usually for marketing. Business cards, logos, publications, brochures, postcards or mailings, invoices, and books are all products of graphics design.

Some designers aren't "artists": they don't create most of the graphics or illustrations they use, but rather create a layout with text and other designer's graphics. Some designers don't work with text at all, such as an illustrator or a digital artist. And some designers do it all: print, Web, layout, and illustration.

What kind of jobs can you get with a graphic design degree?

• Print design
• Web design
• Designer in an advertising agency
• In-house designer for a corporation
• Illustrator
• Book design
• Multimedia (movie titles, TV ads, etc.)
• Corporate Identity (logos, stationery, etc.)

Here are a few examples of what you might be expected to do as a graphic designer:

• You are hired to develop a brochure. You discuss with the customer their goals, target market, design preferences. The customer supplies you with the text for the brochure, but no graphics, with the exception of their logo. You must decide how many and what colors will be used; what fonts will be used; what graphics or photographs will be used.

  Once you've decided the basics, you look over the text supplied. You decide what are the most important elements of that text: what should become headings, subheads, pull quotes. You come up with type treatments for those headings, subheads, body copy, etc. You decide where the logo and/or photographs go, and at what size.

• You are hired to develop a Web site. Once again, you discuss with the customer what they want to get out of their site, who their target market is, design preferences. The customer supplies you with text and photographs.

  You look over the text and decide how to break the text into Web pages. You crop photos and make sure that they're optimized for the Web. You may make a mockup of how you want a basic page at the site to look — colors, fonts, navigational graphics such as buttons.

  Once your customer approves your mockup, you begin to translate that into Web pages. This may include slicing graphics and developing HTML. You make sure that the pages you've developed work well in multiple resolutions, multiple browsers and different platforms.

Graphic design is the process and art of combining text and graphics and communicating an effective message in the design of logos, graphics, brochures, newsletters, posters, signs, and any other type of visual communication. Today's graphic designers often use desktop publishing software and techniques to achieve their goals.