How Can the Top 5 Most Influential Graphic Designers Help You?

As a military spouse, you know how hard it is to find a job when you move from one duty station to another every two to three years. If you are able to work with typography, images and color, you should think about getting a certificate in graphic design. This field is ideal for military spouses, because you can freelance from home. Read through this list of famous graphic designers to see if this is a career option for you. Start at the beginning— what is graphic design? This is the use of ideas, text, visuals and communication to send across a concept or an idea to a group of people. When you create a graphic design, you’ll use words, pieces of text, images, color and even individual letters. Take these lessons from famous graphic designers. Otl Aicher Aicher, from Germany, attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Aicher created most of his designs between the 1940s and 1980s—look at the two posters he created for the 1972 Munich Olympics. He used color and motion to create the images of swimmers and basketball players as he helped to create the publicity for the upcoming competitions. His typography was simple and understated, allowing the images to take center stage. Saul Bass Bass, one of the famous graphic designers of the 20th century, came onto the design scene in the 1950s, creating movie posters for some of the best-known movies ever made: The Man with the Golden Arm, North by Northwest and even Psycho. His images were simple, as was the typography he chose to use. David Carson Carson, who studied at the Oregon College of Commercial Art, began creating graphic designs in the 1980s. He specializes in art direction and magazine design. He’s best known for cover art displayed on Ray Gun Magazine. As you look at his designs, you’ll notice that he makes strong use of typography and incorporating it into his images. Paula Scher For Scher, graphic design means to use type, treating it as an integral part of the visual image. As you look at her posters, you’ll see that she uses one large, central image, with the rest of the design featuring text in several related (but not too related) fonts. She isn’t afraid to orient different words in different directions. One word may be up-side-down and read backwards. Others may read vertically and entire blocks of text may be diagonally or vertically placed. She isn’t afraid to incorporate these methods as she works to create a strong, noticeable design. Herb Lubalin Lubalin, who was most active between the 1940s and 1980s, studied graphic design at the  Cooper Union. His specialties include art direction and typography. As you look at samples of his work, you’ll see he created the ITC Avant Garde font and used fonts liberally in his designs. Do you have a favorite designer or someone you look up to in terms of designing? Share it with us via comments below.