What the difference between media production and graphic design?

Hi Abby,
I know the terminology can be extremely confusing and I'm not sure many people have common ground on what the terms mean. I consider someone who has a background in media to have a diverse range of skills from print production, graphic design, video work, and perhaps even have some basic HTML and CSS experience in order to create web pages. Basically- they'd be able to hold their own or know how to carry out different tasks in each of the different areas.

I would consider graphic design to be focused on creating print or web based materials - they can create different artifacts such as logos, page design, typography. Typically when attending school graphic designers begin with fine art classes such as painting and drawing and then move into more higher level classes such as corporate design or learning to design their own fonts.

Typically students who are not sure what medium to focus on can enroll in a media program and then switch to a more specific focus later on during their schooling. I would recommend looking at job postings at BET or Empire and looking at the different job roles they offer, this may help you narrow down programs or specialties you may be interested in.

Hi Abby,

A lot of these words are implications and have different meaning to those who interpret them. That being said, here is my view:

Media Production implies a proper video or audio (audio/video) production.

Graphic Design is specifically about create graphics and potentially derivatives of graphics, such as animations and such

Given your interest in music, I think you can definitely do both. Personally I find the Adobe Creative Cloud suite super helpful in accomplishing animations through After Effects/Illustrator, and creating album artwork etc through Photoshop. The sky is the limit!

Feel free to reach out with any questions

Cheers
Kunal

Hi Abby,

I too wanted to have a creative job and always enjoyed drawing and painting. I came a roundabout route into design. I studied photography, philosophy & art, then chose to focus on art & design. The courses I chose were very varied and allowed me to try out a variety of techniques from welding metal to creating animation and interactive art.

Get experience using a wide variety of tools and mediums - as the world is constantly changing.

Learning about the web, social media, mobile apps and the new technologies being developed will be really helpful in the ever changing world of design. Print is not dead, although the amount of careers in traditional 'graphic design' are much less than before.

Musicians play their instruments into recording equipment (analog or digital) creating a 'record', content to be copyrighted as property. Graphic designers brand these musicians with a style: clothing, hair, jewelry, cars, homes, girlfriends and town fans can be part of a group's image. Thus the album covers, venue posters, flyers, in-store (point-of-purchase displays) tv cartoons, action figures, t-shirts, limo and tour bus insignia, backing singers and dancers outfits, concert stage design, fans promotional gifts, designer fashion looks, perfume bottles, pendants and logo jewelry, webpage design, photo montage and tatoos are the jobs and PROPERTY (exception: 'for-hire', commissions) of these illustrators, 3D modelers (CAD/CAM), animators and fine painters. M.T.

Hi Abby,

Give you an example, let say I'm working for a fashion company who sales women clothing.

Media production work can be producing videos to demo how good/beautiful our clothing designs are. For example, shooting catwalk models at the fashion shows, editing the video clips, adding music, exporting the final video and publishing it on some websites.
Graphic design work can be, for example, designing posters, web campaigns, email advertisements, etc.

Let me know if that gives you a better understanding.

Hannah