Graphic Design encompasses many different fields but publication, advertising and book jacket design are some of the most interesting to me. Publication is interesting to me due to working in a grocery store and constantly being around magazines. Each magazine has a slightly different way of catching the eye of the viewer, as does each advertisement.  Some magazine covers, such as the Enquirer, as FULL of headlines and pictures. The idea is to catch the customer on their way out of the grocery store with all sorts of saucy photographs and news of celebrities. However, on the same token, you have Time magazine which is so elegant and simple, yet it gets just as much attention. For me, the idea of attracting a specific audience with my work is exciting and challenging. I’m a people person a lot of the time so finding ways to reach out to someone through a simple play of words and photographs is thrilling. Advertising is interesting to me for some of the same reasons. I make posters on the side for a local music venue so its always a challenge to put across the message of what band is playing and what the owner wants me to produce. I also like the idea of making incredibly simple but beautiful advertisements. Some magazines, like most health nut ones, have awful advertisements that have too many words and its hard to figure out what is going on. It drives me insane. I also am really interested in book jacket designing because I read a lot. Sometimes I’ll even specifically buy a book for its cover. I do the same with comic books. There’s just something so satisfying about looking at a well done book cover. I think book jacket design would be fun for me because I am an avid reader so I have an idea of what consumers are looking for when they swing into a book shop.

These photos are from Black and White Graphics by Andrea Lugli
The left is a poster design and the right is a book jacket.

The next photos are from The End of Print: The Grafik Design of David Carson by Lewis Blackwell and David Carson
All of these are covers and subscribe pages from magazines.

 

The next photo is from Graphic Design in Germany 1890-1945 by Jeremy Aynsley
This photo has some advertisements.

Here’s a link to David Carson‘s site. He’s a pretty cool dude. Take a peek at all his other work!
This link has some really nice selection of design examples through out history.
This website is actually quite interesting to look at. There are a lot of different examples of graphic design. This specific link is to one of their articles on 25 creative ads. Webneel