Importance of communication design in contemporary societies

Communication design is the process of successfully delivering a message to a target audience using multiple medias of audio and visual resources to motivate them to act on the desired action, such as spreading awareness about an issue or product, making an informed decision or instilling an attitude. Unlike Art, which is subjective as an individual expression and allows for interpretation, communication design requires the Designer to strategically engage the spectator via creative narrative to establish a link between the artwork and the viewer. As a result, the responsibility of the communication designer extends beyond generating attractive visuals to utilising the power of design methodology and strategy to transmit a clear, crisp message engagingly.

We live in an era of information technology marked by a proliferation of visual vocabulary and shrinking viewer attention spans. In today's society, a good communication design gives clarity, effectiveness, and aesthetics to the information hierarchy. Design is the new Art. To break the visual clutter in society, every piece of communication design should have clarity of form and content and a deep understanding of its target audience. The tools that the designer plays with are form, colour, composition, text, sometimes sound and animation and using information hierarchy to deliver a desired piece of communication. In today's world which is evolving at a breakneck speed, one of the most important functions of communication design is to handle the layers of complexity in terms of information and the assimilation of the same. The communication design expert must first identify the problem/ opportunity he or she is attempting to solve, as this has ramifications for the goal of his design.

Communication design has evolved from pigeons delivering messages, to drummers drumming and announcing messages on the streets to inform the public, to now becoming a global movement around the early twentieth century and today a sought-after career option. As the saying goes, "modern problems require modern solutions", and as such modern-day communication design specialists have a wide range of tools at their disposal to cater to the problems, opportunities and needs of contemporary societies. Communication design specialists are effectively combining conventional design abilities with cutting-edge technology to create distinctive and inventive solutions that will usher in a design-driven ecosystem and help New India achieve its goals.

Communication design, however, was not strongly established as a career until the rise of technological revolution and the advent of Design as a discipline. The internet transformed visual information into a much more accessible and consumable product. Having good strategies of communication design became an important need for companies and advertisers. Due to the ever evolving development of technology and media, this demand will only grow with time with newer dimensions added periodically.

Communication design is a field with several possible pathways. Perhaps the most popular one is advertising, which includes copywriting, media design, video production, and now moving into the experience meta space. Digital Design is also a part of our lives nowadays, focused on the user interface and user experience, which makes companies engage the user and understand them better for providing better services with ease and practicality to the online consumer . Another huge opportunity is in the area of identity design and branding, which is to develop the visual identity of an organization, as the business and they identity becomes paramount. Each brand needs to be individual and unique - even an Individual as a brand. —so they can establish clearly what their unique identities are.

In a somewhat recent development, social marketing has furthered the traditional domain of communication design. While there have been communicators with good intentions for years, communications aiming to address social problems were generally conceived with a great deal of naivety - producing ideas with little or no change heralding impact. However, over time, there has been a gradual adoption and adaptation of the experiences of commercial advertising, and that has been effectively put in the service of the public good via socially aware communications.

All societies develop, evolve and transform within a permanent flow of information exchange. The urban environment, the public transportation system and the mass media ecology are vital sources of information that both express and build culture in myriad ways. For eg. Advertising seeds cultural models of behaviour and appearance, and in turn promotes lifestyles, choices and cultural values. As can be seen, design as a profession has great responsibilities. The aim of communication design is to affect the behaviour , knowledge and attitudes of people - something that occurs after the communication takes place. Visual communication design, variously reflects how social roles get defined, how a cultural language is constructed within a society. Professionals in this discipline have successfully meshed the traditional design skills with the new-age technological tools to propose truly unique and innovative solutions to usher a design-backed ecosystem and fulfill the aspirations of New India.

(The article is written by Shaaz Ahmed, Associate Professor, Communication Design, IIAD)