A Designer’s Journey Toward Certification “reprinted”
I figured with the certification talk going on in various GD forums, I’d “reprint” this article written by Bill Johnston titled “A Designer’s Journey Toward Certification”.
Whether one is for certification or against it, it’s a fantastic read. Bill chronicles his observations over his 40 year career and details the changes in the industry over the last 4 decades which have led up to where we are today. Here are some snippets for the link-lazy among us:
In the 70’s things began to change. Hot type was dying, cold type was the wave of the future. Designers had to deal with ugly type spit out of IBM strike-on machines. They no longer had master compositor’s to lead them by the hand, they had to become expert at splicing & dicing as well as designing and drawing. Those that didn’t, didn’t make the cut.
In the 80’s there was more change still. Dedicated type setting systems were all the rage. Companies could save a ton of money by bringing typesetting inhouse. The trouble was the trained typesetter had gone the way of the Dodo bird, who was going to set type? Why typists of course, trouble was they knew nothing about the letters themselves, just the keyboards. Designers had to step into the breech and specify how and what to set. They began to be system integrators, cobbling early software together in an effort to set type faster, incorporate basic design elements, and rudimentary layout. The call went out to do more and faster. Those that couldn’t adapt to the new paradigm were invited to seek employment elsewhere.
In the 80’s we also began to see a lot more freelancers come into the fold. I hate that term freelancer, probably because it means different things to different people. To designers it means “We are free to take on the challenge of designing your project and we’ll carry your lance in strategically promoting your products and services”, but to a client it can mean “They’ll work for free or almost so, and they’re so eager to get the work, they’ll lance the boil on my butt to boot”! It carries different expectations. But I digress.
Agencies and studios began to cut their creative staffs and outsource more of the work. Large companies followed suit with an eye to saving all that money on salaries. Many of those cut turned to freelancing, others turned to something more stable. But you also saw more designers entering the field who were embracing freelancing. Those who were still employed were asked to produce more and in less time. Freelancers were told to produce work cheaper and cheaper. Companies wanted increased productivity and lower costs. High-end design was still an expensive proposition no matter how you cut it. It still took a significant amount of time for even the swiftest of designers to produce. So while companies were getting more bang for their buck through increased productivity and competition, though they still had to pay highly trained designers pretty well. Then things began to change.
The 80’s also saw the gender revolution in design. Women began to enter the field in large numbers. They brought with them a new energy and vitality, a fresh vision and a willingness to work their butts off. They also brought with them, willing or not, a tendency to work cheaper than their male counterparts. Companies were quick to exploit this fact and many male designers were faced with taking salary cuts or offering cut rate fees to survive. Many female designers were faced with taking semi-clerical positions and low pay just to get a foot in the door. While business’s profited greatly, and graphic design benefited in the long run, pay and respect for it’s practitioner’s were the early casualties of this revolution.
The 90’s saw the birth of the computer as a design tool. Oh sure, many of us were experimenting with them in the late 80’s for various reasons, but they came into their own when we designers could lay out a page of type on a screen and output it on a piece of paper and have it look the way it was supposed to. It made everything faster, cheaper, but not necessarily better. Some of the early software was really bad and very buggy. But the promise was there and soon designers began to adapt to the new tools. But something else was happening, everyone and their sister began to use the new tools and began to layout type on paper. Companies saw that they didn’t need highly trained, highly paid designers to produce their newsletters and brochures anymore. With almost no training or interest, any clerk or secretary could turn out a printed document. What they produced was poorly designed and difficult to read but that didn’t matter so much because companies could see they could save really big money on designer salaries and get cheap on the spot printing to boot. The early days of desktop publishing were some of the darkest days designers had experienced so far. Many talented designers burned out and turned away then and the rest adapted.
The 90’s brought the computer revolution. A new tool that allowed the designer to experiment with more design options and increase productivity at the same time, what a boon. But it also lowered a critical bar in that it used to take training and expertise to become a graphic designer, now it took only a computer, some fonts, and some playing around, and anyone could call themselves a designer. In those days, many would-be designers thought the test for a good a designer, was in how many fonts one could get in one document.
Thankfully, those days are long gone, but the industry paid a price again in lower respect, lower standards, and lower pay.
By the mid-90’s the newest and perhaps most profound graphic design revolution yet was under way. Web design was in it’s infancy, it held such promise and such peril for it’s practitioners. It forever altered the way we think about how to display words and images together. It offered such early promise in terms of increased opportunity, respect and pay for it’s practitioners. It also attracted a new breed to the design mix, the programmer.
Just as with the Desktop Publishing revolution of 10 years before, many people were attracted to the field who knew little about design but a lot about software and hardware and the new mysteries of code. Their early efforts were ugly indeed, but they got better and by cross-pollunating with designers, each learning from the other, web design grew into a potent industry force. It began to rival print and some say, to replace print. Demand was up, awareness was up, pay and respect were going up as well.
Like I stated before, it’s a fascinating read. It’s tough to really evaluate where we are today and how we got here without the proper historical perspective. In observing the 40 year decline in our profession from where it once was, one can get an “A Christmas Carol-like” glimpse into our future. In “A Christmas Carol”, Scrooge took advantage of his second chance and made significant changes. How will WE respond?
This article was originally published on the Creative Latitude website.
.chris{}