The purpose of this study is to examine the graphic design concept perceptions of university students who take graphic design education by using metaphors. The research was carried out with 160 students from the Department of Graphic Design at Inonu University, Hacı Bayram Veli University and Necmettin Erbakan University. A total of 142 students (87 female and 55 male) were considered to be surveyed. The students were asked a personal information form and an open-ended question via a questionnaire prepared by qualitative research method. The analysis of the survey data was evaluated by the content analysis method from qualitative research techniques. According to the analysis, the participants created 96 metaphors. The most repeated metaphors for graphic design are; Dreaming (7), Universe (6) and Freedom (6).

The common characteristics of these metaphors produced by the participants were collected in eight sub-categories which are Effort /Labor dependent structure, Unlimited structure, Useful structure that facilitates, Multi-dimensional structure, Target-oriented structure, Changeable structure, Holistic structure, Uniform structure.

According to the result obtained in the study, there are different perceptions of the graphic design based on gender and grades.