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Graphic Design: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
What Graphic Design Is
Graphic design is how words, images and colour are arranged to communicate: logos, posters, book covers, apps and road signs.
Key fact
Good design often goes unnoticed: you just understand it.
Type
Serif fonts have small strokes at their tips; sans-serif fonts don’t. Helvetica, from 1957 Switzerland, is one of the most used sans-serif fonts.
Key fact
Comic Sans was designed in 1994 for a cartoon dog in Microsoft software.
Screen & Print Colour
Screens mix light in red, green and blue (RGB). Printers mix inks in cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK). That’s why colours can look different on paper.
Key fact
The K in CMYK stands for “key”, meaning black.
Logos
A good logo is simple, memorable and works at any size. Nike’s swoosh was drawn in 1971 by student Carolyn Davidson, who was paid $35.
Key fact
Nike later gave Davidson shares in the company.
Setting Type
Before computers, printers built each page by hand from small metal letters, kept in wooden cases. Type sizes are still measured in points.
Key fact
Capitals are “uppercase” because printers kept them in the upper case.
I ♥ NY
In 1977, Milton Glaser sketched the I ♥ NY logo in the back of a taxi. He did it for free, and it became one of the most copied designs ever.
Key fact
Glaser’s original sketch is in the Museum of Modern Art.
Icons & Emoji
Susan Kare drew the original Macintosh icons in 1984, pixel by pixel. In 1999, Shigetaka Kurita designed the first famous emoji set for Japanese phones.
Key fact
Kurita’s original emoji are in the Museum of Modern Art.
Fun facts
Sports pictograms took off at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, so visitors could find their way without reading Japanese.
Times New Roman was created for The Times newspaper in London, in the early 1930s.
Pantone gives colours numbered names, so a designer’s exact shade can be printed the same anywhere.
The FedEx logo hides an arrow in the white space between the E and the x.
“Mind your p’s and q’s” may come from printers: in back-to-front metal type, the two letters are easy to confuse.
I ♥ NY was made to lift New York’s image in the 1970s, when the city was close to bankruptcy.
Susan Kare also drew the smiling computer that greeted early Mac users at start-up.
Story: The Poster Nobody Saw
The Poster Nobody Saw
1939, Britain. As war begins, the government designs posters to steady the nation. One simply says: Keep Calm and Carry On.
Nearly 2.5 million are printed, but they’re saved for a real disaster, like an invasion. Almost none are ever put up.
In 2000, a bookshop owner in Alnwick found one in a box of old books and framed it. Its simple design became one of the most copied in the world.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
Logos, posters and apps all involve graphic design.
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True. Arranging words, images and colour.
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Question 2 of 10
Helvetica is a sans-serif font.
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True. No little feet on the letters.
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Question 3 of 10
Screens make colour from red, green and blue light.
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True. That’s RGB.
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Question 4 of 10
The Nike swoosh was designed by a student.
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True. Carolyn Davidson, in 1971.
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Question 5 of 10
“Uppercase” comes from printers’ type cases.
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True. Capitals sat in the upper case.
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Question 6 of 10
The I ♥ NY logo was first sketched in a taxi.
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True. By Milton Glaser, in 1977.
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Question 7 of 10
Early Mac icons were drawn pixel by pixel.
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True. By Susan Kare, in 1984.
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Question 8 of 10
Graphic design is only about making things pretty.
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False. Its main job is to communicate.
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Question 9 of 10
Serif fonts have no strokes at the tips of letters.
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False. Those small strokes are the serifs.
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Question 10 of 10
Printers use red, green and blue ink.
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False. They use cyan, magenta, yellow and black.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. Graphic Design has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- Design Museum London — Helvetica, Milton Glaser and graphic design history
- Museum of Modern Art — Original emoji by Shigetaka Kurita; Susan Kare’s icons
- Nike — Origin of the Swoosh (Carolyn Davidson, 1971)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Gutenberg, typography, CMYK printing
- Transport for London — Harry Beck’s Tube map
- Design Museum — Kinneir and Calvert; Swiss Style
- Google Fonts
