I don't think I want to do graphic design anymore - burn out

Out of context: Reply #47

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  • mikotondria30

    Those of us that have been around long enough to have seen the change from the reverence of well-paying, grateful customers to how things are today need also to affirm that 'the computer', or I'll add - to a great extent, broadband internet, has changed the page and quantity of consumption. For a while, at the end of the 90s, the internet had an identity of it's own. It made sense to say that something 'looked like a website', or did not. New software and more focussed sources of aesthetic inspiration for the website-production industry (design and development were far more closely linked, and simpler) meant that everyone was looking into a narrow beam of inspiration and it attracted more money and more attention, and became a glamourous intersection of new and old industries. Accessible to self-starters and self-taught people, where the journey from talent to cash and notoriety was swift. Design per se was the content of so much traffic. Contemporary design was indispensable to the success of any online enterprise. And so the house of cards began its inevitable messy collapse when some cunt somewhere first typed those fateful words "Design Rockstar". And design died a little. At this time the balance shifted from dial-ups to broadband and the pace at which we all browsed the web upped a few gears. Pages in seconds. Big pages, full of stuff. Hundreds of words and videos and as many graphics as you can fit on them. More and more content, jammed in, skimmed over, no, no no, next page, instant search results, 10 pages in 20 seconds. Design was gorged like an eating contest, stream-lined, less art, more function. Lube on the wheels of industry is the perfect description. There is an art to it, but it's not obvious, or easy, and you'll never feel like a rockstar doing it. Social media metastisising all through your lovely sexy design, the myriad of compulsory elements that bind what is so much more obviously a place of business into the whirring teeth of industry, that looks different one year from the next. What is designed and engineered now is the context and the content, not the graphics. It's all a sell, all a honey-pot to get the user invested in your page, emotionally connected with the brand, fueling and extending the promotion, becoming borg to the meme. Share this, tweet this, offers, upsell, incentives, networks, mobile, AR.. Personally I think this IS a more exciting time to be developing and designing. It was always selling something to somebody, stick with it, get your hands dirty, sell-out, buy back in.

    • By context you mean the network right, then what's your position as a designer if graphics aren't designed?argybargy1

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