In the visual media field, digital art vs graphic design often sparks continuous debates about whether the two disciplines are completely separate expertises or not, especially when both of them involve digital tools. However, there are actually some distinctions between them in terms of purposes, rules, and focus.
Key Takeaways:
Digital art always prioritises artistic values and approaches. For example, a digital illustration does not necessarily aim to capture attention in a marketing manner but to engage in self-expression and storytelling.
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OCAD asserts that graphic design revolves around visual communication, which utilizes layout, colour, imagery, and typography. This type of design creates compact content, like websites, posters, logos, and advertisements, for business purposes.
Digital art vs graphic design bears some similarities that may be the cause of the tendency to take both of them as the same field. Below are some of them.
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Apart from the similarities that both disciplines consider visual storytelling, they take different approaches, tools, focus, rules, and applications. Below is the explanation of the difference between digital art and graphic design.
Graphic design always works on the visual communication of brands and users’ needs. Thus, it requires the software and tools that can serve to create and enhance logos, brochures, websites, and others, like Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Canva.
On the other hand, digital artists find comfort in software that can mimic traditional art mediums, such as Procreate, Corel Painter, and Clip Studio Paint.
Digital art upholds aesthetic exploration and subjective self-expression. The basic rules barely restrict artists from only dedicating themselves to just one specific style. On the other hand, graphic design tends to listen to the needs of the clients and guide them in technical details to achieve the most compact visual communication.
The interpretation in digital art is unlimited. The artists are free to include various colours, textures, and forms that invite their audiences to delve into their imaginations and emotions through the personalised artworks.
On the contrary, graphic design places more to clarity to prevent misunderstanding and maintain objectivity.
Digital art vs graphic design can generally reach out to various types of audiences. As long as the audience appreciates the artists’ creativity and visual interpretation, the artworks can always thrive.
In contrast, graphic design is heavily commercial-focused and targets a specific audience according to the brands’ aims and purposes.
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The techniques of digital design vs graphic design can be interchangeable, especially when the versatility of digital software and applications is involved. But digital art shelters unlimited experimentation and creativity. For example, artists can break the colour theory to introduce their own styles.
Meanwhile, graphic designers showcase more modest techniques, yet innovative styles to maintain the clear visual communication and make an impactful impression through creative choices.
In most cases, artists explore their creative visions and implement the ideas autonomously. This results in a distinctive mark on each of their artworks. However, in certain cases, such as in the making of comics, some artists communicate with their production team and publication team.
Meanwhile, graphic designers tend to have constant eye-to-eye communication and discussion with clients, target audiences, and stakeholders to project the goals and realise them altogether. This aims to ensure all exchanges can align with the brand’s identity and channel its messages properly to the audience.
Usually, graphic design revolves around assets that are intended for business needs, like business cards, banners, posters, websites, social media, and logos. In addition to that, it expects some particular formats to maintain the quality and versatility of the outputs, such as JPEG, vector files, and PNG.
Whereas the output in digital arts is diverse, like printable illustrations, book covers, commissioned artworks, and high-graphic games.
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Digital art vs graphic design might overlap with one another, but there are certain distinctions between them, especially in terms of overall design objective. Regardless, when you create graphics and art digitally, fonts will most likely play their part of it to deliver your messages.
Blankids Studio presents interesting font collections for digital and graphic designs, which you can leverage to create innovative yet authentic and purposeful projects. Grab your most suitable choice immediately!
