Communication Design is a mixed discipline between design and information-development which is concerned with how media intermission such as printed, crafted, electronic media or presentations communicate with people. A communication design approach is not only concerned with developing the message aside from the aesthetics in media, but also with creating new media channels to ensure the message reaches the target audience. Some designers use graphic design and communication design interchangeably due to overlapping skills.

Communication design can also refer to a systems-based approach, in which the totality of media and messages within a culture or organization are designed as a single integrated process rather than a series of discrete efforts. This is done through communication channels that aim to inform and attract the attention of the people you are focusing your skills on. Design skills must be tailored to fit to different cultures of people, while maintaining pleasurable visual design. These are all important pieces of information to add to a media communications kit to get the best results.

Concrete roads

“Don’t design for everyone. It’s impossible. All you end up doing is designing something that makes everyone unhappy.”

Communication design seeks to attract, inspire, create desires and motivate the people to respond to messages, with a view to making a favorable impact to the bottom line of the commissioning body, which can be either to build a brand, move sales, or for humanitarian purposes. Its process involves strategic business thinking, using market research, creativity, and problem-solving. Communications designers translate ideas and information through a variety of media. Their particular talent lies not only in the traditional skills of the hand, but also in their ability to think strategically in design and marketing terms, in order to establish credibility through the communication.

The term communication design is often used interchangeably with visual communication, but has an alternative broader meaning that includes auditory, vocal, touch and smell. Examples of communication design include information architecture, editing, typography, illustration, web design, animation, advertising, ambient media, visual identity design, performing arts, copywriting and professional writing skills applied in the creative industries.

The identification of self-esteem as a distinct psychological construct is thought to have its origins in the work of William James (1892). James identified multiple dimensions of the self, with two levels of hierarchy: processes of knowing (called the ‘I-self’) and the resulting knowledge about the today.