Graph­ic de­sign is the sci­ence and the art of vi­su­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In Trinidad and To­ba­go we have been em­ploy­ing the art of graph­ic de­sign for cen­turies. This start­ed with the Amerindi­ans and the vi­su­al her­itage of our Asian and African cul­tures. The sci­ence of digi­ti­sa­tion dri­ves the tech­nol­o­gy of mod­ern graph­ic de­sign giv­ing us the op­por­tu­ni­ty of be­com­ing the cre­ators of a unique Trin­bag­on­ian style of lo­cal graph­ic de­sign. With this Trin­bag­on­ian style we can be the leader and not the fol­low­er.

Our lo­cal ad­ver­tis­ing in­dus­try, how­ev­er, has been en­gag­ing in a fol­low-fash­ion men­tal­i­ty when it comes to strate­gies and con­cepts for us­ing graph­ic de­sign. For ex­am­ple: In one of the ad­ver­tise­ments for a lo­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­ny the use of the car­toon char­ac­ter used to per­son­i­fy the Amer­i­can ma­te­ri­al­is­tic girl to sell a Black­Ber­ry cell phone. It would have been more au­then­tic to cre­ate a char­ac­ter re­flec­tive of the flavour and style of a true Tri­ni ma­te­ri­al­is­tic girl. This would be dis­played in the speech of the char­ac­ter, mo­tion of move­ment and man­ner­isms.

The lo­cal buzz word is now change and the time has come when we must be­gin to take steps to­ward change in this im­por­tant area that has both cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic di­men­sions and is even more so in the new em­pha­sis on a knowl­edge based econ­o­my. The truth is that as we be­gin to open our own minds to change, the so­ci­ety and the world will be­gin to em­brace and ac­cept the new styles that emerge. Let our lo­cal dig­i­tal art move­ment be­gin.

There is so much cre­ativ­i­ty in the minds and hearts of our peo­ple. Many may say that the true ex­pres­sion of our hearts has been lim­it­ed by the ideas of "big busi­ness," their di­rec­tives and de­mands.

No more ex­cus­es

The change will in­evitably come from the free­lance graph­ic de­sign­ers and cre­ative en­thu­si­asts, as they are not so con­fined by the de­mands of a large ad­ver­tis­ing agency. I urge you, the in­di­vid­ual dig­i­tal artist to ex­press your ideas and cre­ations on your own blog, Face­book or oth­er me­dia that are now eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to you. Change will even­tu­al­ly take place in ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies but if the ini­tia­tive is en­cour­aged by top man­age­ment the evo­lu­tion will be faster. They should re­mem­ber that the ear­ly in­no­va­tor usu­al­ly reaps the greater re­wards.

The ben­e­fits of de­vel­op­ing our own Trin­bag­on­ian style will be:

�2 A stronger idea of our own unique iden­ti­ty as a peo­ple.

�2 More holis­tic and up­lift­ing con­cepts and vi­su­als of our beau­ti­ful peo­ple from the dark­est beau­ty to the tru­ly mixed ex­ot­ic fea­tures. A truer de­pic­tion of the mass body of faces of our cul­ture will be brought forth to the cen­tre stage in pos­i­tive mind­ed cam­paigns that will in ef­fect change the minds of the in­dus­try elite and the per­son on the street. On­ly good can come out of this think­ing.

Com­pet­i­tive­ness is in de­sign­ing for the glob­al stage. Our lo­cal style of graph­ic de­sign, mul­ti­me­dia con­cepts, iconog­ra­phy, ty­pog­ra­phy, etc, can one day im­pact the world. From the way we use colour, our se­lec­tion of a "type of mod­el" or the rhythm or tem­po of a par­tic­u­lar mul­ti­me­dia piece. These styles once com­plet­ed in a mean­ing­ful way can sell any prod­uct or im­pact any mind any­where. In my own ex­pe­ri­ence as a lo­cal graph­ic de­sign lec­tur­er and now own­er of my small ad­ver­tis­ing firm, I've met some of the most pas­sion­ate and tal­ent­ed graph­ic de­sign­ers.

It is my hope that as the soft­ware skills of lo­cal graph­ic de­sign­ers de­vel­op and their art back­grounds di­ver­si­fy, they do not base de­signs en­tire­ly on what is per­ceived to be the in­ter­na­tion­al de­sign­ers style. We must be­gin to ask our­selves how can I make my de­sign unique in the con­text of the Trin­bag­on­ian style. If my work is viewed by a Brazil­ian de­sign­er will he see el­e­ments of a "Trinidad idea or To­ba­go idea" present. Re­mem­ber that it is our unique aes­thet­ic in graph­ic de­sign that will cat­a­pult us as de­sign­ers in the chang­ing tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven land­scape. On the oth­er hand, how­ev­er, please do not overuse the palm trees or over kill the red and black. This is not what I mean by our own style. I am talk­ing about in­te­grat­ing in­to the tech­nol­o­gy our unique her­itage of graph­ic de­pic­tion that like some of our oth­er nat­ur­al re­sources we seem to have been so for­tu­nate­ly blessed.

Ki­tran Charles

BFA (Graph­ic De­sign)

Sa­van­nah Col­lege of Art De­sign, USA

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, High De­sign

(Lo­cal ad­ver­tis­ing firm)