Graphic Design is dying
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- robotron3k-2
I blame the downfall of design on Helvetica.
It's standardized sameness and made designers lazy.
- < yeah. there. I said it!robotron3k
- so it started falling in the 60s?monospaced
- 2edgy4metrue_cut
- they started giving it away in the late 40s I believe, $50 for the whole set. that also made it super pedestrian.robotron3k
- $50 in 1940 could probably buy you a car or 10 minutes of necking with Betty Grable.CyBrainX
- like qbn here.etero
- utopian1
A vast majority of my clients are now asking for "theme like designs" that are customized not to look exactly like the $40- theme that they just purchased...but they don't want to spend a lot of money on a unique custom experience and design. Fuck it...the client is always right!
- Continuity0
'we dont all do work for Nike and Apple'
Oh, boy.
You've got a very black-and-white view of this, you know. I assume you freelance, yeah? Then why you just get on the freelancer pool with Cossette, BBDO, Havas and whoever the fuck else are in Montréal (I don't remeber now, and frankly don't care to do so) and do good non-template graphic design for provincial or national (or *gasp* even international!) brands at 500 CAD a day?
If you're going to focus on 'des compagnies de broche à foin' — to use your local patois — as clients then, yeah, you're going to get paid utter shit. On the other hand, you don't need to work for Nike or Apple to command a decent rate.
Now stop the doomsday shit, and get to work.
- 500 CAD ain't worth much these days.nb
- I'm not up on what day rates are like there, anymore. Haven't lived for a long time.Continuity
- lived there*Continuity
- 500 CAD is nothing.bainbridge
- Well said. I manage to find clients who want good design even this fucking hell hole of a city. People forget design is a job and your shitty clients are azarkonite
- reflection of your ability to acquire clients.zarkonite
- deathboy0
Wait your just as guilty... tsk tsk. Thats like bernie sanders callng for $15 minimum wage but wanting college graduates to be interns and paying them only $12. "Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music."
- well saidterry_cloth
- Nice – Who said that?de4k
- supposedly diogenes, but who knows with quotes attributed to him. old and likely rewritten by historiansdeathboy
- BaskerviIle0
Graphic design isn't dying, it's just evolving. Yes, technology has played a part...computers in general have changed the profession since the 80s. Back then graphic design was a pretty particular set of skills (to quote Liam Neeson), now I think there are more media to design within and you need to have a much more diverse set of skills to do that effectively.
More importantly you need to understand how all the different media we have now are integrated and inter-related so you can think of good ideas that work across the board. I'm a firm believer that designers are primarily employed to have good ideas first, and to carry those ideas our second.
I have a print/typography background, then got into branding and have gradually evolved into a designer who specialises in experience design and innovation in general. Along the way I've picked up skills in web/UI/motion/environmental design amongst other things.
One thing I've observed is that standing still is a surefire way to make yourself obsolete. Move with the times, keep learning, keep being curious, keep having great ideas that work for the times we live in.
If you think of yourself as a pair of hands for hire, you will be replaceable. A good creative brain is less replaceable.
- wow, our design history is very similar, from print/type to experience/environme... heremonospaced
- Where do you work now mono? I've been on here on and off since 2003!BaskerviIle
- in-house at a large corporate joint in NYCmonospaced
- formed-2
Parts of it are dying. Like all these templates that are "good enough" there seems to be a new "$5 logo" thing popping up on Facebook every month or so.
I've personally seen a lot of marketing types learning more Adobe products and thinking they are "designers".
Quality will always be quality, though. That's one of the largest things I've learned. I thought technology would change a lot, but it really hasn't done much. Web is the only real place I see there being a "new standard of mediocrity".
- For ''normal'' people, graphic design quality is often made in Word and they really like it.Ben99
- The web always had mediocrity - a million terrible flash sites and bad Gifs... look harder or not hard at all - www.siteinspire.net for example.fadein11
- Ben990
I'll be curious to see images of exemples you guys find innovative, fresh and new in graphic design. Post 'em up in this thread.
- Ben99-3
Hi guise!
when I wrote this thread, it was an on the spot thinking and I wanted to create a discussion, it works! thanks.
I know graphic design is not really dying, but it is in mutation right now. The digital age is changing a lot of stuff around us and it's still unclear where it is going exactly. The music industry is changing, the book and magazines industry is changing, the news media are changing... So is graphic design. None of those are really dying, they're just mutating in something new, and at the moment we're at the end of a chapter and the beginning of another.
- Things change.weirdname
- yeah, like our facesBen99
- All day, every day.
Such is naturePepeTheFrog
- Projectile0
Back in my day, to create a static web page you had to do a two year web design course.
Now, I'm able to use my design skills to create something that works nicely, looks good and doesn't look anything like the template I started with.
I yearn not for the "good old days"
- I dunno about that - I think yesteryear's web was a lot simpler than today's...detritus
- weirdname2
- YOUR DRAWING IS SHIT!Ben99
- https://36.media.tum…weirdname
- set0
Graphic design isn't dying.
Ok, sorted.
- MrT0
Nah.
I reckon low-price design jumbles sales are there to serve serial 'entrepreneurs' - another career everyone seems to have these days.
Let them feel legit with their crappy bit of cheap wallpaper. They can then stop asking proper designers to develop a complete brand for them in exchange for a LinkedIn recommendation and a bit of their worthless stock.
- ArchitectofFate0
zzz clickbaiting me with death-related-headlines...
graphic design isn't dying, it's transcending. Everyone with a camera still isn't a photographer, instagram doesn't create art directors, doing 10y of compulsory-school-nativelanguage... doth not a copywriter make.
I blame todays blandness on our twilight zone programmers. They want to call themself interface dudes, experience gurus or hack-anyffin's. Few have understood the following: The ultimate goal of ui/ux/xd designers is to rationalize themself away. So what do you do when everything looks the same, and you're actively working towards being marginalized?
now I must get back to my soulcrushing work
- templates are great btw, when they fail the "real" companies come begging for the good stuff anyway.ArchitectofFate
- monNom3
I'm going to just repeat what everyone else is saying. Design is not dying. The market for visual design services, and communications strategy is probably larger than it's ever been. Every company has an Instagram these days, along with a voracious appetite for new content to feed it. Who's going to fill it up with images, that stand out and attract followers, if not a creative?
As for Wix et al. That's not your market anyways. It's not even a design service. It's an assembly line product. People get tricked into thinking the product is what they're buying when really they want expertise.
You don't go to a doctor because he sells you the same prescription he sells everyone else. You got to a doctor because he knows what to ask and what to look for so that you get the right prescription for your needs, and then you get better.
- Continuity0
'The rise of all this mediocre design does not signal the end of the design, it just obscures it.'
Going to have to respectfully disagree here, my man.
Mediocre design coming out of whatever website Benfal is referring to only serves to highlight good design, and its inherent value.
Yes, there will always the shit little businesses trying to get something for nothing ... and getting what they pay for.
On the other hand, no real self-respecting brand or company would put their projects in the hands of these types of designers, and will actively seek out the pros with the eye, judgement and craft to pull the job off, and they will still pay good money for it.
- There are some bad designers who charge a lot and convince companies with money to hire them.bainbridge
- I worded it wrong. We are actually in complete agreement. I was saying design is alive and well. Just behind a pile of shit cheap design options.monospaced
- Ah right, got it!Continuity
- monNom0
And that prescription could totally be a WordPress template, depending on their budget. They still need the strategy and expertise to fill it with good content and compelling imagery, to make sure it's designed to reach their goals, to differentiate then from their competition, to monitor and refine it through testing and iteration.
Wix isn't doing any of that.
- VectorMasked1
I do think Graphic Design is dying in a way. Design is all over. Everything has to be designed or over-designed because it sells. The problem is with a regular folks. Designers like myself who love print and have focused on print work mostly are the ones who will mostly saying design is dying... and it is true. But design rather that dying is just going through a phase where things are changing. Some people might not need a bunch of flyers or print brochures now... but they might need instead a mobile app and more of an online presence. It's basically a matter of learning new tools and trying to slowly focus on new areas of design. And yes... all those online tools for crap logo making, or template sites and the rise of crappy free fonts affect people in the industry.
I myself like I mentioned have always had a thing for print and font making... but I have slowly been moving more towards online and digital stuff. Not because I love doing this nor because of interest in the digital stuff... simply coz I have both been switching direction kinda unconsciously or naturally. When I left college 10 years ago I was making a lot brochures, catalgues, cool stationery... loved going to the printers to see proofs, check on colour accuracy, smalling paper, sitting down and going over paper samples figuring out what stock and weight might work best, etc... But at the same time I was slowly getting more web stuff. Every year site design jobs we going up and these last 3-4 years I started to work a little more on apps, mobile sites, intranets, and things like. It's all kinda boring, but design is there... it's just a little different.
I also feel that if in the past 5 out of 10 people needed to hire a designer... and the other 5 had absolutely no need of one... those cheap online tools or templates are attracting a lot of the crowd that never ever hired a designer or see no value in it. So now... out of those 10 people, 5 still need a designer of some sort, and the other 5 rather than being uninterested like before, they just go for cheap template shit or call you to see if you'll do them a job worth $5000 for $250 and a tablerone.
- robotron3k0
Design isn't dying, it's just charging $5 per hour
- i_monk0
Not everything needs to be innovative, needs to stand out.