Human civilization has always searched for ways to give visual form to ideas and concepts, to store knowledge in graphic form, and to bring order and clarity to information. In the past when computers were not there, these needs have been filled by various people including scribes, printers, and artists. In 1922, William Addison Dwiggins coined the term ‘graphic design’ to describe his activities as an individual who brought structural order and visual form to printed communications, that an emerging profession received an appropriate name.

Writing in words and letters is a form of graphic design, as scribes gradually agreed that certain symbols would represent specific words or sounds. Over the centuries, these symbols were refined, clarified, simplified, and standardized--generation after generation of anonymous design work. So it proves that graphic design is as old as human civilization itself.