The unbreakable bond between graphic design and fashion

*Image: Graphic Design for Fashion by Jay Hess and Simone Pasztorek*

Is there any fashion house that doesn’t have an in-house graphic designer? We dare to say no. Maybe a designer could do everything in the beginning, but as the brand develops, it’s impossible to not have graphic designer.

It’s not just in house. Many fashion designers have background in graphic design. For example, designers we have interviewed.

Raditya Puspoyo from Delapan Batik (@delapanbatik) told us on an interview that his background in graphic design helped him create prints for his brand. Lyris Alvina from Imaji Studio (@imaji.studio) also has the graphic design background.

Kent Hadi, an avid streetwear content creator, recently launched his brand, Hotel (@hotel.official). Kent took a degree in Digital Media and Design at LaSalle College Indonesia. Elden Yoliva who told TFR his plan on building a graphic design agency recently launched a streetwear brand, Not For People.

On the global scale, there is Jeff Staple who founded visual communication agency Staple Design. Erik Torstensson, one of the founders behind creative agency Saturday Group, launched FRAME Denim in 2012.

Ina Binandari who is going to coordinate the upcoming fashion department at UIC Design said that there are many graphic design skills that will benefit a fashion designer. “When I look at the foundation course for graphic design, I see introduction to photography, principle and element of design, digital imaging, digital design. They will benefit a fashion designer very much. Some of the classes can be combined, I think.”

In fact, when she’s running the fashion department at LaSalle College Indonesia before moving to UIC Design, Ina stated that fashion design students always collaborate with graphic design students during fashion shows to create backdrop and installations of the shows.

“Installation, sculpture and multimedia for a fashion show are part of graphic design. We can’t separate graphic design from fashion,” said Ina.

In 2010, Jay Hess and Simone Pasztorek published a book titled ‘Graphic Design for Fashion.’ The book features the development of graphic design implemented in fashion brands, such as Acné Studios, Viktor&Rolf, Kenzo, Issey Miyake and Paul Smith. It features a broad range of work from typography, image manipulation, fashion photography, packaging, branding, styling, advertising campaigns and moodboard.

During an interview with Dazed, Hess mentioned that an innovation as simple as swing tag could highlight the need for visual communication to be completely integrated with collections.

A lot of fashion counterparts require graphic design skills. Editorial design for books, magazines and other types of publications are part of graphic design studies. User experience and user interface, art direction, branding identity, social media content, video and image manipulation were among the areas of graphic design.

The correlation between streetwear and graphic design is even closer. Starting from the visual identity of a brand, the placement of logo, graphics and typography on the products, and finally down to social media content and advertorial campaign. Those are the elements of graphic design.

The most beneficial part between the interdisciplinary fields is perhaps the image making. It’s where communication skills and taste level of a designer are tested. There is a certain image a brand wants to portray. The image also helps position the brand in the market. Attention to details like editing, models, colours and layout will convey the brand’s message to the audience. A wrong choice of any one of those will convey a different message. Take Jessica Walsh’s work she published on her Instagram as reference. Although it leans towards fashion editorial, there are graphic elements in every image.

One thing for sure, graphic design is more than just designing logo and website. The definition of branding identity runs deeper than simply creating collaterals like business card and letterhead for a client. Like Stefan Sagmeister said, “Design is a language, so you can use it for complaining, entertaining, educating, agitating, organising, money raising, mourning, denouncing, selling and promoting.”*

Graphic design requires critical thinking and thorough observation to identify and analyse a problem. It’s not only here to please the eye, but to also come up with the most practical solution.

Everyone can create beautiful design but not every designer is able to combine beauty and function. That is what a graphic designer should strive for.

*Twemlow, A. (2006). What is graphic design for?. Mies, Switzerland: RotoVision.