Discussion: What is graphic design? Why is it important?

Graphic Design is the art of visual presentation and communication using graphical elements. There are a lot of different types of graphic designs, including: advertisements, magazines, and of course web design. Graphic design officially began and was used in the late 20th century and advanced into the early 21st century, however if you actually think about it, it began way back in history during the age of the cavemen.
Technology is the application and the process that helps human beings modify nature to meet their needs and wants. In simpler words, technology is a creation from science and engineering. Design and technology definitely have a very significant relationship. Looking at innovations, both technology and design are needed to produce an innovation. In the past century (mostly in the last two decades), both technology and design have been combined to generate brilliant foundations like all of the new electronic devices (IPods, phones, laptops, cameras, etc.) Even though design and technology can be seen as the same thing, they have to different definitions and often get mistaken with one another.
Whenever I see or hear the word design, I think about art, pattern, color and all the elements of fine art. But, when referring to digital design or graphic design, the word has a new meaning. Graphic design, in my opinion, is actually quite an interesting topic and shows us what we can do with the availability of technology and innovations.

	Research method	Design process
Preparation for research	Literature review	Study historic and contemporary examples, media
Information gathering. Goal: to limit variables and identify problem	Collection of preliminary field data	Experimentation with materials and visual ideas
Identification of problem and hypothesis	Information correlated; problem defined; educated guesses made; hypotheses stated; research design prepared	Design problem identified through visual analysis and recognition
Exposition of facts and interpretation	Research plan is carried out; results are analyzed, plan is modified as necessary based on results; experiments are replicated	Work is created in a series, with each work suggesting problems to explore in subsequent work
Presentation of results and findings	Publication of findings	Exhibition of work or production of design