Jun
20
PART 2 Educating a client has always been the job of the graphic designer (so, for all you designers out there, you could probably add “communication teacher” to the list of titles already proposed.) Education justifies the cost of service while it sells the client on professional opinion. My understanding of the rebranding of designers is that a name change can better describe the evolution (more on this later) of the designer and may, hopefully, be commonly understood among designers and clients alike. As much as I would love for a new change in title to get around numerous explanations of why all the white space on the page shouldn’t be filled, and really, why the type should be set smaller is really just a joke. A designer can never do away with informing his client on how the design process works regardless of the name change. Nor will it guarantee a client’s willingness to accept what a designer’s job entails, and to hold that job into great esteem. Yes, in part, this is because the tech age has brought much accessibility, pirated software, and lots of so-called experts in the field. (Designers, I’m begging you, quit your whining! Every field in arts and culture has been impacted with all the new directors, illustrators, industrial designers, writers, authors, playwrights, poets, musicians and so on who can get their hands on Adobe Creative Suite, Pro Tools, and a whole other host of “icreate” software.) But the real reason, is actually much older than that; a problem that in all its stages and players has never experienced a resolution, even to this day. It’s what Saldanha briefly touches upon in his quandary in Evolution. It is the way in which the arts and artists are perceived by the general public, as a whole.
Saldanha begins his missive in Evolution with how designers arrived at design in the first place. “ ‘Design’ once replaced the term ‘art’. The term ‘design’ communicated that the work we did was more than artistic. Now it is time to replace ‘graphic’.” And therein lies the problem. The terminology designers are identified with now actually is just another way of reducing the very foundation that design, and all of the arts, arguably, is fundamentally based on. (Tsk, tsk, tsk. Certainly I thought designers were better at solving problems than with layering one on top of the other.) Guess what designers? Instead of using “design” to inflate importance and title an emerging role in the creative realm, you oversimplified what is at the very heart of good design, namely, art, and with it, reduced your worth along with your good name, minus the hourly wage and portfolio of handsome print advertising. (Good on you!) And really does a couple of bucks and a lot of magazine tear sheets garner bragging rights? Read more
Jun
17
Designers worried about industry nomenclature? How about Babbitt?
Last year, an article in Design Edge (DE) really upset me. The article made a case (I’m over-simplifying here) that graphic designers are not artists. I wrote a big rant about my point of contention (oh yes they are, and why is their a need to distinguish that point anyway?) and thought to get it published, but I was too wordy for Design Edge, (understandably; my piece was about four times the word length of DE’s original article) and didn’t know where else to put my view into print.
So, for you lucky readers who have discovered my blog, I’m posting my response to what I thought was an absurd issue to be hung up on. I’m publishing the article in parts, as it is long, so as not to overwhelm the reader. (How I feel with online articles from The New Yorker.) I’d love to know your thoughts, after your review.
PART 1 Design Edge has proven to be a strong, forward-thinking publication containing interesting and vital industry news. However, the May/June 2007 issue, to me, had resorted to some backward beliefs I thought designers, and the design community at large, had abandoned. I was wrong. Editor Ann Meredith Brown’s letter, about designers and an identity crisis, and the following article by Winnie Czulinski, “Rebranding Designers,” is what changed my point of view. The article? Designers worried about what to call themselves (and thus how they will be received in society.) The debate, it seems, has attracted many new players in the design community, repeating longstanding arguments, and resulting in needless confusion and compromise. I hope in my response, to how rebranding will only degrade and isolate designers and the design industry, that I can also demonstrate, why this argument is an issue to begin with–and how by treating the problem–offer a solution that could satisfy, designers, and society as a whole. Read more
