Future role of the graphic designer
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- ********
There have been a lot of posts on QBN lately about bargain basement design solutions, and the effect that they could have / (are having) on the design industry.
Maybe logo design (for small and medium companies) isn't going to be a viable stream of revenue for many pro graphic designers any more?
I remember reading that Marshall McLuhan (for his sins), went on a bit about how a medium begins to loose it's power, once the general population begins to understand the machinations which orchestrate it. I think this might be pretty true - the democratisation of the technology behind creating graphic design means, at the very least, that the codes and conventions traditionally used to create design are less stringently applied (simply because less of the people using the tools have a design education). The medium changes into something different - and the old is left behind.
If life without these smaller logo and branding jobs became a common reality.. what would happen to graphic design next?
Maybe graphic designers are going to have to rethink what specific expertise they have, and the new ways that this expertise could be beneficial to their clients. I'm starting to think that graphic design is like engineering - in the sense that a good visual designer is someone who solves problems visually.
I think that there's always going to be a very real need for people who have a clear understanding of design fundamentals, and no amount of software can beat the ability to innovate and think laterally. But it seems to me that the tradition role of the graphic designer has died, or is perhaps on the way out.
Am I right?
- waterhouse0
gimme the gist?
- ********0
theres no money in logo design by itself.
branding is another story in itself.
- +10ETM
- Yup. Logo is the final touch point and execution of a strong 360 degree messagebabaganush
- version30
quality affects value
- spendogg0
Companies want everything now. you can't just be a graphic designer, you need to know photoshop, illustrator, indesign, quark, flash, dreameaver,familiar with motion, UI, IA, and some 3D to be a Junior Designer for Whole Foods.
- and no actionscript and phpdoesnotexist
- haha, *knowdoesnotexist
- actionscript and php might get you an extra grand if you are luckyAmicus
- and 10 years of Java as well as .NET and Actionscript 3.0 for a design oriented job?!?vaxorcist
- baseline_shift0
agree with janne. I remember a professor telling me that "Design is merely a series of decisions." beyond competition with low end designers, good designers should be able to manipulate emerging technologies/mediums, etc. Design, itself, is going nowhere. It may just look or act differently.
- Salarrue0
It will always be a huge gap between the work of someone playing around with istockphoto elements and other one creating the elements from scratch. Most of the time clients/bosses realize that when you don't work with them anymore, if you are a good designer...
At the end they are looking for quick solutions, they don't want designers to take time to think and get inspired... the internet gives them the illusion that creative process is a very easy, cheap and fast push-a-button action and that anyone with the same tools can get the same quality of work. And of course there are institutions that sell you that idea too... learn graphic design in 3 month courses...I always smile and wait them to beg for help... for the economic crysis I have no choice but to accept some clients but there was a guy that wanted a Real Estate website and only because I suggested Joomla was open source he wanted to pay me 200$ for the domain registration, hosting, design and personalization of Joomla... and everything to next week.
- so true, I just made more fixing some cheap Indian labor than I would in the first place... sucka!zarkonite
- ********0
I think it's always worth remembering that by paying the lowest price, you're rarely choosing the least expensive route.
- like the clients will bug you to hell even if you charge them almost nothing?Salarrue
- airey0
man-o-man this just keeps coming back around and around. the moment it went to computers it was then end, until it wasn't. then adobe made the cs suite an affordable package for anyone to buy and that was the end until it wasn't. free software like gimp and free fonts like dafont make accessibility the end for designers and yet, here we are.
they'll always be room for people that know what they're doing. granted the price will drop if there's too many of them (which it seems like is a problem we're suffering) but then people will choose a different career if they're not getting paid what they want.
the key will be in selling your services to the client. don't let them undervalue you but then you have to make sure you're not over valuing your own services. i've dealt with a few freelancers lately that are charging way too much for less than stellar services.
- it is trueSalarrue
- adobe did put a lot of design related specialists out of work thoughPupsipu
- True. That's why so many twats are currently 'digital specialists'babaganush
- Salarrue0
I think is called the "BONO Effect"
- I read that in COMMARTS... but I found this http://www.trendmatt…Salarrue
- interesting link********
- ********0
I'm not so concerned about this from a 'oh noes - there are no jobs for graphic designers' sense. I'm more interested in what graphic design might become.
I think there are general trends. With the web, our potential reach is spread out so far that we can risk appealing to the few. To my cynical mind - it seems that as society speeds up, quality of design becomes secondary to making _any_ impact.
I still think things are obviously going to change. It seems like graphic design is more about ideas than ever these days - and that design departments are almost functioning like management consultants did in the eighties / nineties ... steering business.
In terms of web-design (which is how I try to earn my living) I also think things are changing.. it's becoming far easier for a non-technical person to publish on the web - and the standard and quality available to that person is increasing too. I tried out Google Sites again the other day - and while it's still incredibly basic, it's not going to be long before it's a viable solution for a lot of businesses. There'll always be a need for bespoke websites and web-applications - but it seems that a lot of people just want to follow the path of least resistance.
- the moment 1 person wants an alteration to a template to stand out we have work.airey
- smart businesses know they have to stand out. which = custom sitescarabin_net
- junetic0
Creating a webpage with google sites is like buying a cheap printer to print out your cool graphic work. They are all tools. New tools, better tools, easier-to-use tools will always be developed and offered to the market. Design is obviously not just about the tools. It's about solving problems creatively, making the complex simple, communicating unique points of view, inspiring and bringing joy to people...etc etc etc
- konik0
graphic design is a form of communication, the tools used in this profession can be used with anyone. tools don't define ideas or although they can help shape execution of an idea. Design, Graphic or otherwise is the pure communication of ones thought for purpose. If you use the tool without thinking you are not designing. Let the grunts use the tools and the rest of us to get on with leading the field of thinking. whatever they will do will always be at the mercy of the tools and the trends we set. Your choice is this, become a leader in your field or find a new profession otherwise join the ranks of 99 designs.
- ********0
I like turtles.
- me too....me too.********
- what about turdles?doesnotexist
- me too....me too.
- ETM0
... this thread topic again.
*looks around, sees nothing new, exits.
- Pupsipu0
oh shit good thing I found a thread like this omg.
Hokaay, so in the future designers will do a lot more shit than they do now. Like in the 1950's they could have made posters or made the type or product designs and lots of other stuff like Massimo. But it was hard for most people to do that because everything took so much time, so it was a team effort, and most members of the team ended up doing technical details like cutting out fonts with X-actos.
Now one person can do all those things and more pretty well because many technical details are being handled by software. So there was already a big change in the economics and activities performed by people in the design industry.
I think in the future there will be even more software programs that will handle even more tasks for the designer. Focus groups, brain scans, UI auto-generation, UI auto-testing, eye tracking data sets, all kinds of neuroscience etc.. will all come in software packages just like Adobe's.
This will let one man handle a lot of work currently handled by hundreds of people in ad agencies and will make massive targeted advertising campaigns affordable to more businesses.
A designer, or advertiser will be able to really solve visual problems by having access to a lot of knowledge about neuroscience and the effect of design on people's every neuron. Today this is a guessing game with knowledge about the field dispersed among many specialties.
I also thought about future client/designer relations in the comments here
http://www.ideasonideas.com/2009…
- ukit0
"Focus groups, brain scans, UI auto-generation, UI auto-testing"
Automatic kerning?
- Pupsipu0
lol no but auto-kerning is actually pretty doable now, only no one bothered to do it, or standardize it or wrap it into a good UI.
You could run a whitespace/negative space analyzer script on a font set for all kinds of tracking, font color, font size scenarios and output a dataset that a program like inDesign would see as a kerning table. Instead of kerning, you would only track but then pick a kerning setting out of the multitude of tables.