We are surrounded by graphic design. The interface on your new smartphone? That's graphic design. So is the trendy pattern on your T-shirt, the eye-catching billboard downtown, and the intro to your favorite TV show.

Graphic design is the use of text and visual content to express ideas, convey messages, or provoke emotions. There's an almost unlimited variety to graphic designs: some are the size of skyscrapers, and some are as small as a postage stamp. Some graphic designs are created with paint, others with pixels. Graphic designs can be carved into rock, printed on paper, written in the sky, or tattooed into skin. Click through this slideshow to see some of the astounding variety of graphic designs.

Very Large Large-format graphic designs can be huge-- as big as skyscrapers. Very Small This logo is less than 3 nanometers across-- smaller than a water molecule! High in the Sky Skywriters create their graphic designs among the clouds. Deep Underground The earliest recorded graphic designs are ancient cave paintings like this one, dated over 17,000 years old! Light Designs Many modern graphic designers use digital media, creating new art with millions of points of light. Skin Deep Another ancient graphic design medium is human skin: tattoos have been around for at least 6,000 years.

Graphic design hasn't always looked the way it does now. It grew and evolved over the centuries to become the refined art form we see today. The political, social, and economic factors of every era molded the standards of graphic design as people created designs for commercial, political, or artistic reasons. Like most forms of creative expression (like painting, literature, and music), each graphic design movement was created out of the ideals its time, while building on the discoveries and trends of previous movements.

While graphic design has been around since early humans first painted on cave walls, we'll be starting our examination of the history of graphic design from the Industrial Revolution. This was a turning point in graphic design, since it was the first time artists could really mass produce their work and get wide feedback from the public.