Digital design is the creation of highly manipulated images on the computer. These images then make their final appearance in print. Although computers have been around since the forties, they were not reasonable tools for designers until the first Macintoshes came out in 1984. April Greiman was an early computer enthusiast who believes that graphic design has always been involved with technology. After all, Gutenberg's fifteenth-century invention of movable type created a design as well as an information revolution.

Greiman's first interest was video, which led naturally to the computer and its possibilities. She bought her first Mac as a toy, but soon found it an indispensable creative tool. “I work intuitively and play with technology,” says Greiman. “I like getting immediate feedback from the computer screen, and I like to explore alternative color and form quickly on-screen. Artwork that exists as binary signals seems mysterious to me. It is an exhilarating medium!” She wants to design everything and to control and play with all kinds of sensory experience.

Designers working with digital design need to be more than technicians. Consequently, their studies focus on perception, aesthetics, and visual form-making as well as on technology.

I didn't have the math skills (so I thought) to become an architect. My high school training in the arts was in the “commercial art” realm. Later at an art school interview I was told I was strong in graphic design. So as not to humiliate myself, not knowing what graphic design was, I just proceeded onwards?the “relaxed forward-bent” approach, my trademark! -April Greiman