Graphic design is a practical art which helps in communication. Visual information is formed in a way that produces a message. This can be done by placing words and pictures in ways that will get the attention of others. People who do graphic design as work are called "graphic designers". In printed media, graphic design includes typography, organising illustration, book design, page layout, specifying print.
Graphic design can be done in different media. These include paper, video, labels, and web sites.
Graphic designers use many skills, rules and techniques to provide the right information. They must combine artistic expression and media relations. Skills include the ability to look at the whole picture, color theory, design principles, understanding of art, etc.
Graphic design today is heavily used in all types of media, magazine articles, internet and especially in advertising. Almost every marketing effort utilizes graphic design for brochures, business cards, websites, logo design and corporate identity.
Contemporary graphic designs tends to feature modern geometric forms and shapes and bold typefaces. They emphasize making the message easy to read and comprehend and also grab attention and make memorable.
Rwandan genocide
The Rwandan genocide happened in 1994. It started in April and lasted 100 days. During that time, about 800,000 people were murdered.
In a genocide, many or all people in a group are killed because of their ethnicity, colour, religion, or political opinions. In the Rwandan genocide, members of an ethnic group called the Tutsi ("abatutsi") were killed because of their ethnicity. The killers were extremist members of another ethnic group called the Hutu ("abahutu"). The Hutu killers also killed other Hutus whose political beliefs were not as extreme as theirs.
In 1994, almost all Rwandan people (85%) were Hutus. However, for many years, the Tutsi minority had more power and ran the Rwandan government. In 1959, the Hutus overthrew the Tutsi government and took power. Tens of thousands of Tutsis ran away to nearby countries.
A group of the Tutsis in exile created a rebel group. They called it the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The RPF invaded Rwanda in 1990, starting the Rwandan Civil War. The Tutsi rebels and the Hutu government fought until 1993, when the two sides signed a peace agreement.
However, on April 6, 1994, an airplane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down. Both Presidents were Hutus. Nobody knows for sure who shot down the plane. The RPF said the Hutu extremists had shot down the plane themselves, just because they wanted an excuse to start killing people. The Hutu extremists blamed the Tutsi RPF, and right away, they started killing Tutsis.
Within a half an hour, Hutu militias had blocked roads all over Kigali, Rwanda's capital city. They stopped every car that came by, and killed every Tutsi they found. The Rwandan genocide began that day.
In the next 100 days, members of the Hutu government's army, militias, and even civilians would kill 800,000 people an average of 8,000 people every day. This makes the Rwandan Genocide one of the fastest genocides in history.
The two main militia groups that carried out the killings were the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi. These were supposed to be youth organizations of two pro-Hutu political parties. However, the government turned them into militias to carry out the genocide.
Within a few hours after the Presidents' deaths, military leaders in Rwanda's different provinces called together militia and civilians. They told them that the President was dead, and that the Tutsi RPF had killed him. Then they ordered the crowd to kill Tutsis, saying things like: "Begin your work!" and "Spare no one!" including babies.
Just after the Presidents' deaths, Hutu extremists assassinated the Rwandan prime minister. They also tortured and killed the ten Belgian soldiers that had been assigned to protect her.
After that, throughout the night of April 6-7, Hutu militias and the Rwandan army got lists of people in the government who were political moderates (meaning they were not extremists). They found these people in Kigali and killed them. They did this so the moderates would not be able to stop the genocide. They also killed journalists and human rights activists who had spoken out against the Hutu government.
On the night of April 6, Hutu militias also went house to house in Kigali, killing Tutsis. By the morning of April 7th, the killings had only gotten worse. Interahamwe killed and looted however they wanted. Other countries' journalists were able to film many of these things. In a few days, the genocide had spread all over the country. As the genocide spread out into the rural parts of Rwanda, the killers paid less attention to murdering moderate Hutus and more attention to massacring Tutsis.
The Rwandan Genocide was committed in a very organized way. For example, the genocide's leaders made lists of people who were against the Hutu-led government. They gave these lists to militias, who went and killed those people, along with their families. The militias also blocked roads so they could check the identification cards of everyone who came by. These cards had a person's ethnic group listed on them. When they found a Tutsi, the militias would kill the person. Often, they used machetes. When Tutsis tried to hide from the killers, the militias would search every building in an area, inch by inch, until they found the people who were hiding. Buses even drove the killers from massacre to massacre.
The army and militias were very brutal towards women. They raped between 150,000 and 250,000 Tutsi women. They also kidnapped women and forced them to be sex slaves. After raping women, the rapists would often mutilate the women's sex organs with things like weapons, boiling water, or acid.
Most victims of the genocide were killed in their own villages. Often, they were killed by their own neighbors. Government radio stations encouraged regular people to kill their Tutsi neighbors. Hutus who refused to kill Tutsis were often executed immediately. Husbands killed their Tutsi wives because they were scared of being killed if they refused. There were even priests and nuns convicted of killing people who were trying to hide in churches. As historian Richard Prunier explains: during the genocide, "Either you took part in the massacres or you were massacred yourself."
The killers used propaganda to encourage the genocide. They set up radio stations and newspapers which were full of hate speech. Often, they encouraged people to "weed out the cockroaches," which meant "kill the Tutsis." The killers would read out the names of people they wanted to be killed over the radio. Radio stations told their listeners to make sure they disemboweled pregnant
Tutsi women.
In October 1993, the United Nations Security Council created the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). It was supposed to help put the 1993 peace agreement into place. However, UNAMIR did not have permission from the Security Council to protect civilians or try to stop the genocide. At this time, UNAMIR soldiers were only allowed to shoot their weapons in self-defence, if somebody was attacking them personally. They were not allowed to use their weapons or get involved to protect civilians who were being attacked.
More and more, UNAMIR's peacekeeping troops were being attacked. Countries began to pull their soldiers out of Rwanda. Some members of the United Nations Security Council, like the United States, argued strongly that the UN should take "all" of its peacekeeping troops out of Rwanda. Eventually, the Security Council decided to decrease the number of troops UNAMIR was allowed to have. On April 21, 1994, as the genocide was spreading across Rwanda, the Security Council decreased the number of allowed UNAMIR troops from 2,548 to 270 a decrease of almost 90%.