The Difference between Graphic Design and Desktop Publishing

The Difference between Graphic Design and Desktop Publishing

By Rongfei Geng

 

Desktop publishing (also known as DTP) combines a personal computer and WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) page layout software to create publication documents on a computer for either large scale publishing or small scale local multifunction peripheral output & distribution (Wikipedia, 2007).

While the main focus of DTP is to publish and the page’s layout design, lets take a look at how Graphic Design is defined:

The term graphic design can refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines which focus on visual communication and presentation. Various methods are used to create and combine symbols, images and/or words to create a visual representation of ideas and messages. A graphic designer may use typography, visual arts and page layout techniques to produce the final result. Graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated (Wikipedia, 2007).

 

Despite some overlapping key words like “page layout”, “typography”, “design”, it is still not hard to discern that DTP focus on combine information together using computer softwares, serving the final purpose to print; yet graphic is to communicate with visual designs, which does not necessarily serve printing purpose. I generalize the main difference as the following points:

 

1. Importance attached on the word “publish” and “desktop”: Although graphic design do include the skills and the producing-process for create a publication, its main focus and function is not limited within it. It also covers some non-publishing products like a web-age banner design or a illustration design. DTP use skills that have also been covered by the Graphic Design area to generate publications and focus on how these publications would look like after PRINTING. Also, DTP contains the key words “desktop”, which mean using computer softwares like InDesign, Pagemaker, Photoshop etc. Yet there could surely be some possibility that a graphic design is executed manually.

 

2. Extent to which the artistic competence are needed: Although skills like typography and using color are needed in both fields, DTP focus on how to deal with different elements (text, images, solid color shapes, lines) and arrange them in a page’s layout, while graphic design may delve into a specific shape, the color of a icon, how the meaning are conveyed through a concrete pattern, how to use lines to compose a logo, or even more abstract expressions using visuals. To put it simply, the former requires less artistic competence than the latter.

 

3. Different practitioners and different products these two filed yield: DTP is being practiced by designers and non-designers, this fact is consistent with what point 2 illustrates. While graphic designers are undertaken by those who had received professional fine art training, DTP is available for all the publishing practitioners like a newspaper editor, a teacher, a military officer who want to provide some information to his soldiers, a restaurant manager, and so forth. And the products what DTP yields are primarily “newsletters, brochures, ads, posters, greeting cards, and other projects into digital files for desktop or commercial printing” (About.com). The graphic design, however, produce patterns and logos(that could be used in an ad or a poster), color themes, font-type designs, PowerPoint templates, user-interface, or the covers of magazines and journals.

 

 

 

References

 

[1] Desktop publishing, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Publishing

[2] Graphic design, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_design

[3] About.com, Jacci Howard Bear: What is the Difference Between Graphic Design and Desktop Publishing? http://desktoppub.about.com/od/professional/f/gd_vs_dtp.htm