Rachel Leslie
14 July 2022

     In today's digital age many people consider print design irrelevant or dated, as the use of designs has been  mostly integrated into digital usages. While people commonly consider these digital designs and files to be secured with absolute permanence with the assistance of modern technologies like cloud storage, they often miss the point of the art itself. When trapped in its digital form, art looses a dimension of itself - its tangibility, permanence, and form. For many who consider digital storage as a form of permanent art, they miss the true dimension a print can establish. The involvement of the element of form in a print design allows them to take on physical shapes or usability. Creations like playing cards, decorative name plates, or calendars are all examples of interactive printed designs that would not serve a use as digital designs. Despite the permanence of modern online storages, digital images are still just fleeting, disconnected pixels behind a screen - especially considering the fact that if ever the internet and technology were to be destroyed, so would all the digital designs. 

     Additionally, when working with graphic design, a key element all artists must learn is how the use of color will be effected when transferring a design from digital to print. For example, some colors will print lighter or darker than they appear, or even have different color undertones - and these differences vary for each machine that is used. This effect occurs with nearly every print, as the digital light affects how a persons' eye responds to color. Understanding the relationship between digital colors and  printed colors is an important element for all print designers to consider. By forming this relationship, it allows the artist to compensate for the variation and design for the print, not the digital file. This births artistic understanding of print design, that in turn cause an appreciation for the art that is created.

      Print design is part of peoples everyday lives whether they realize it or not. It surrounds society from the  posters in a store or classroom to the cards in their hand when sitting around a table on game night. Print design is important because it impacts in these many ways throughout everyday life. While the significance of these might seem small, imagine walking through a  library where the books do not have any covers, an isle of a grocery store filled with blank basic packages, or plain walls in a room without any decorative posters. Although the modern digital age of the world has had a strong influence on the way today's society views printed designs, these prints are still relevant because they allow for people to appreciate their tangibility, utilize their element of form, and to fully visually invest in the enjoyment of its creation rather than as a fleeting image behind a screen.