Midnight In The Garden Of Ego & Entitlement (2013)

As digital production and online distribution rapidly democratizes Graphic

design, technical

permissiveness simultaneously fosters an ethical delinquency among many who consider themselves legitimate professional; redefining what design professionalism entails.

Despite both parties gaining an advantage through

a greater mutual command of the context in which their businesses exist, a lack of holistic understanding of design is at fault. In order to offer some form of solution, I will discuss the necessity of education, for both clients and designers, its current failures, and where it stands most likely to succeed. Education (both institutional and self-initiated) is the primary tool at our disposal, and, by focusing our efforts inward, it would then be more probable that, at the very least, a field of empowered professionals would arise from a dedication to standards, ethics and sustainability. The enlightened designer could then mentor clients through a widespread grassroots effort.

But for now: where does this leave us, in 2013, as

a profession? More specifically, what can we — all of us, and individually— do to break the deadlock? With formal education and certification largely decried as exclusionary, we must more immediately re-frame the struggle as an all-for-one aspiration to a place of professional maturity.

In a culture that spends as much on advertising as it does on national education1, and the distribution glut effecting client businesses just as dramatically as it does their creative providers, one would think the imperatives of differentiation, distinction and voice above the noise would be of a higher priority and value. A vast majority of the client base suffers from ignorance of the full scope of knowledge the practice demands, and allows, to its own short-sighted benefit, a certain level of antipathy to have developed towards a practice that ‘anyone can do.’ This has become an epidemic, not just limited to your garden variety start-up, but to national sports brands.2

To follow, it should come as no surprise that

the business media has been actively consolidating consensus against professional design, promoting that business cut out the (problem-solving) designer altogether for years. Seth Godin’s essay on How To Make A Website3 in which he outlines the ways in which nondesigners can go about doing all of the “problem solving” aspects of design themselves, only (maybe) calling in a designer once a custom icon needs made. He follows this essay by admonishing creators to “get better” at their craft if they expect to even get those drips and drabs of piecework.4 During the first week of January 2013, Godin again championed the entrepreneur as the sole rightful decisionmaker, but, given the recent context of his other two posts, it is clear designers are implicitly not to be

1 Marshall Mcluhan. Understanding Media. 1964. 228 2 sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/mark-cuban-wants-designs-dallas-mavericks-uniforms-214849952.html 3 sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/12/how-to-make-a-website-a-tactical-guide-for-marketers.html 4 sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/12/true-professionals-dont-fear-amateurs.html

included in this call to action.5 Godin safely assumes that a designer should not make critical business decisions because they themselves are not professionals, and as masters of a “dead” product are doomed to fail as entrepreneurs anyway. With his Ad Age top-ranked blog and over one-quarter-million Twitter followers, Godin is a dangerous enemy of the design profession for the simple reason that a lot of people listen to him.

The resistance and ill-will is in part justifiable;

that the current tide shift represents no better than exploitation of either party is an understatement.

Generally, cheap design is entirely ineffective and therefore worth less than even the low, low price which was paid. (I tend to agree with prominent designer Khoi Vinh’s counter that the current client services arrangement could be salvaged by more involvement by the designer, not less.6) Neither the designer nor the client benefits when compromised transactions under serve, and ‘lowers all boats’ by establishing a precedent in which the competent designer must then position herself to be undercompensated to appear ‘competitive,’ even realistic. This, again, is culpable to a lack of understanding: the client doesn’t know they aren’t ‘doing it right’ and the designer doesn’t or won’t take into account the subordinating effects of bottom-feeding. The two circumstances have, as will be discussed at length, done little to the service of neither designers nor their clientele and instead creates a suction that effects all from the bottom up.

5 sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/01/what-do-you-make.html 6 subtraction.com/2011/07/20/the-end-of-client-services

Designers themselves contribute to the confusion and antagonism, however. The field is rife with disingenuous egos more focused on self-aggrandizing exercises than in conducting professional and sustainable practices.

On another front, an inordinate amount of ‘designers’ without current qualifications drag the perception of the field lower through agonizing complaints of entitlement (generally masked behind technophobia and allegations of ageism.) Because both attitudes result in a position of victimhood for a great many designers, clients come to expect a top-down vendor-customer purchase cycle rather than an immersive collaboration for mutual gain.

I was surprised to learn during the course of writing and receiving feedback on this paper the lack of clarity and consensus around graphic design practice by its participants. It was said that design cannot be both craft and trade, nor vocation and liberal art. Upon further reflection, it became evident that if even successful and very well respected members of the design community take issue with professionalism ‘by definition’— what value we provide, or even how we provide it— how can we expect an outsider to parse that most projects require “understanding, skills, standards, and obligations beyond what is typically assumed.”7 It is within this lack of context that it becomes more difficult for a potential client to justify hiring a professional solution.

Market position would require the client to fully

grasp what ‘unique value’ means and is, in turn, worth.

This fundamental breakdown explains why so many

7 smashingmagazine.com/2012/10/30/why-should-web-design-be-profession/

Celebrity Good Enough

Professional & Corporate Agency

SUBJECTIVE RISK

Sub- Optimal “The Good Jobs”

PERCEIVED WASTE

Unprofessional

Artist Thunderdome: Where Most Designers Live

Pro- Client

Good Enough OBJECTIVE RISK

Criminal Negligence

Contests Generic

Critical Insight Ego

Maturity

ANTAGONISM OF THE DESIGN ENVIRONMENT

Novel

resort to ‘good enough’ software solutions and lowestbidder outsourcing over essential relationships. The selffulfilling precedent here is that “because unprofessional … employment has ever dominated our industry, most potential clients believe they should run their own project and make the design decisions after being presented with options. Most designers believe they should simply be told how high to jump and which hoops to jump through. There exists no profession within those ideas.”8 “Because of this false-perception, clients often treat creative professionals as laborers who were born to do their work, not experienced professionals that are an equal part of the design process.”9

If no two designers can agree as individuals, it makes sense that their loose professional confederations would act any differently. Whereas several notable industry associations (aiga, gag, etc.) make claims to serve as advocates, their efforts have no doubt failed miserably while preoccupied with choosing the Pantone Swatch of the Year and organizing contests and conferences that amount to little more than talking amongst ourselves.

These clubs (as they exist) are far less bodies of collective advocacy than they are membership-for-membership’s sake exercises in navel-gazing.

State-backed certification programs and their role

in legitimizing modern professional practice and as a collective, educational and public relations arm, while in place in all other major design disciplines and in several

8 smashingmagazine.com/2012/10/30/why-should-web-design-be-profession/ 9 webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/workflow/educating-your-clients-8-lessonsfor-web-designers-to-teach-clients/

other countries, have yet to find the traction or consensus needed to take root in the us. Despite the successes of the rgd in Canada, and the hopeful optimism and merit of proposed dcca, cerd and certifyD models, the design community is rabidly split over even conceptual unity, with very little chance of reconciling any time soon.

As if “our industry is prone to many common failures of unregulated capitalism, with the added instability of extremely low barriers to entry and near-zero cost per user in many cases” were not enough, these external conditions are compounded when, “if you try to play by the traditional rules and regulations, you run the risk of getting steamrolled by someone who’s perfectly willing to ignore them.”10 The presence of this ‘perfectly willing someone’ is inflated no doubt by the two extremes of ego and entitlement, creating a perfect storm of false reality which in turn can be perceived as more global truth than exception. Whether attributable to the quest for internet fame by the pre-talent or the desperate scratching for their place of the post-talent, these behaviors have dire consequences for the graphic design profession. To understand the problem is to understand the motivations of specific designers: if all we have left is choice, why then do designers continue over and over choose to let themselves be taken advantage of ?

One explanation is found in the perceived weighting of design, or at least some fictional representation of

10 marco.org/2013/03/19/free-works

what it entails. Wherein pop culture itself has taken on its own form of currency and socialization has become moderated in graphic form through Facebook, so has design, the vehicle for each, been branded as carrying with it some form of social merit. Having a much higher element of visibility than other services, our profession suffers from the cult of celebrity more than most.

This attraction — the “Gossip Girl effect” — makes

sense in the postmodern, avatar-as-surrogate reality anyone under 25 has come to accept as the norm. A designer’s context of success derives from assimilating the fictional trappings of the fabulous-yet-quirky character that designs by day and djs by night (all the pavement pounding, check chasing, and ‘make the logo bigger’ happens during the commercials, of course).

As a result, for every Frank Chimero and Jessica

Hische there are 10,000+ others thinking they’ll make a big splash and charge $25,000 for a logo simply by ‘getting the word out’ — ironically excavating what would’ve once been their market by trading services for portfolio pieces. “ Today, students’ design work … shared online and through institutions becomes, in effect, an advertisement for its accompanying self.”11 So much creativity and energy is largely wasted in these one-sided pursuits. This waste frames design as nothing more than spare or marked-down inventory, with the participants negligently oblivious to its implications for their own futures (let alone that of the profession as a whole).

11 blog.linedandunlined.com/post/36674032078/school-days

On the other end of the spectrum lies the ‘elder statesmen’ mentality that crusts the rim of the field.

Demanding that 25 years pre-digital experience doing newsletters in Topeka entitles one to a seat at the Milton Glaser table, the industry has an overwhelming amount of post-professionals still vying for attention that amounts to little more than rambling endlessly on LinkedIn forums, demanding the respect that other professionals get after so much tenure. These complaints are largely devoid of context — having been an accredited graphics professional in 1990 is nearly irrelevant to sustaining professional practice today. And yet it rarely dissuades the post-talented from pitching work they don’t understand, let alone command. It’s a new context and, regardless of our age bracket— kicking-and-screaming aside—we must adjust and do so with humility. Few are the geniuses portrayed in their resumes, and fewer will be paid to make a picture of an interface where a functioning interaction is in order.

One rarely finds the tech-displaced professional taking a step back towards actually taking on the necessary skills.

Many times it’s the arrogance of “I’ve already been z, I won’t go back to x” when, in reality, it’s more along the lines of denial that z doesn’t exist and x is where things have found you.

Credit where it’s due: many do attempt to gain some command of related spheres, but even among them there is a shocking lack of self-respect. Even over the long-term, the economic forces of the underclass of psuedo-professionals enforces an environment which, in final terms, truly makes self-development a condition of personal desire over profitability. The years of experienced context is the older designer’s best

asset, but they are largely underappreciated in light of antiquated or fad diet implementation. More often than not, their practices are compromised for the sake of taking whatever it is they can to pay rent, however beneath them.

Rather than wallow in the desperate pit of the current state of things, I look instead to the development of what Behance founder Scott Belsky calls a “creative meritocracy … the difference between a critical mass and a credible mass.”12 To do so, education and cooperation are critical components.

Looking at the prerequisite knowledge needed

for professional level design is to first break it down more granularly to appropriately include psychology, economics, social science and writing in addition to ‘making things’ and formal aspects. Holistic selfimprovement deserves just as big a place on the pile of professional development as digital publishing and responsive grids. Learning (scholastic or otherwise) is most valuable in that it helps debunk myths and attitudes, and again, why it is so crucial to professionalism.

This level of instruction (or comprehension) is

strikingly absent from almost every level of design education — whether it be the self-taught $20 logo designer in Delhi to pricey, private mfa programs.

Our school systems are set up from grade 1 to have us believe in the sufficiency of skills-centric curriculum,

12 99u.com/articles/6732/welcome-to-the-era-of-creative-meritocracy

however much times have changed and rendered that a parochial fantasy. “Education designed to cope with the products of servile toil and mechanical production are no longer adequate … it is now under increasing pressure to acquire the depth and interrelation that are indispensable in the all-at-once world of electric organization.”13 The system has left many of the ranks of so-called designers completely underprepared for that level of understanding. What we don’t (can’t?) track, let alone teach, is: common sense, taste, desire, ethics and experience. Because schools can’t define, let alone sell, these intangibles, they have self-servingly dismissed them as inconvenient truths. We’re left with a situation in which we may have more hands capable of rounding corners and adding a drop shadow than we did 10 or 20 years ago, but I would argue we, sadly, have fewer capable visual communicators as a whole.

Misdirected and antiquated curricula, for-profit

education and a concurrent lack of post-graduation standards has rendered a design diploma all but meaningless. So when I refer to education, I point towards a mastering of the ‘real’ tools of design: the underlying humanities of context. In order to regain our place as respected experts, we have to move past the commodity aspect that currently defines us. A greater understanding of context alone can work to both sides: it sets the truly experienced from the software jockeys (from within the profession), and better conveys the expanse of skills needed to the buying client and the general public (without). (Similarly, any lack of context

13

McLuhan. 357.

$$$

Free $

Quantity Of “Designers”

b

m

a Free $

Professional maturity impedes inventory of low-end supply while replacing it with The Credible Mass.

$$$

Limiting low-end supply forces the surplus market demand to employ options further towards the higher end.

=1

b

a Free $

Excess of poor quality providers maintains underclass of clients. Shortage of mid-range clients exclusionary to small to mid-range firms.

detail

m

$$$

a+b

$$$

(a) Trend adds more undifferentiated providers. (b) Economics responds to surplus supply by reducing value.

Quantity Of “Designers”

Democratization of design has moved most mid-level practice into lower end of the spectrum, but has created a slight spike on the high end.

Quantity Of “Designers”

Quantity Of “Designers”

Quantity Of “Designers”

Quantity Of Jobs Free $

$:$$$

Free $

$$$

Through education, mentoring, peer pressure and overall improvement of the context of design practice (from both sides), the quality of projects and designers could be predicted to rise in kind.

explains why outsourced/crowdsourced/low-level design is generally so dismal, but also why there’s such a demand for it.) At the root, it’s not so much about hard skills than how one can better cultivate soft skills to engender the whole towards more successful and thereby valuable outcomes.

Not to discount the power of open-source MOOC

courses and limitless reading material on an infinite range of subject matter streaming to our homes and phones, and the gallant efforts of websites like weenudge.com that translate design beyond faceless implementation to the client, there is only so much that can be done within the ephemeral, low-accountability online sphere. It is mainly through tangible, relatable interactions with other designers we work alongside and learn from that the richest opportunities occur.

We can help shore up the future of the field by

providing time. Instead of pitching another pointless rfp, an established professional can devote those energies towards the younger generation, who would likewise contribute the time saved in avoiding design contests.

In a poignant call to action, Jessica Velasco couldn’t have said it better: “If you’re serious about your work, you’ll already know that your business decisions have to be based on more than speculation. What a mentor brings is actual experience. Ideally, your mentor will have been successful in their field, however that success is measured. Someone who specializes in the same tasks you perform is going to understand your situation better, be more likely to have experienced something

similar and be able to offer specific advice.”14 The growth of mentorship might result in the rebirth of the paid, junior level design position. In a saturated labor market (nearly 300,000 designers at last, best estimate in the us), there has been a noticeable trend towards the destruction of entry-level design jobs in favor of unpaid internships (even as the requirements for hire have grown exponentially more ludicrous in scope). As studios struggle to contend with lower budgets and higher competition, the low-end has become an apprentice colony (however illegal this practice may be, the hungry junior is the last to complain, as they are learning this is ‘as good as it gets’). David Airey called out the abuse of free labor in which “the intern does the work of a normal employee without getting paid. It is where the employer devotes time to the individual intern so he or she can learn as much as possible about the chosen profession.

Too many companies either don’t know the difference, or don’t want to.”15 By employing, and giving juniors the opportunity to “develop business as well as their creative and technical skills,”16 established professionals can build more equity than the current model of “finding a way for clients with smaller budgets to pay less.”17 Mentorship, crafted well, could embrace older designers as well as younger students. The us-versus-them mentality becomes broken down, while clients learn to accept that we will want something in return for our investment in their projects.

14 sitepoint.com/mentoring-for-freelancers/ 15 davidairey.com/more-on-unpaid-internships/ 16 stuffandnonsense.co.uk/blog/about/thoughts-on-mentoring 17 stuffandnonsense.co.uk/blog/about/thoughts-on-mentoring

As designers committed to our own sustainability, let’s start by talking less about GitHub repositories and “100 greatest uses of cats in animated gifs” etc., and start actually educating ourselves as well as our clients and prospects. “The industry has changed. Business has changed. The perception of the value of design has never been more muddled. The design industry has never needed an army to stand together more than now.”18 In the absence of formal, regulated standards, we may have more success not only reaching ‘our own,’ but will — ideally — turn off the spigot of unrelenting psuedoprofessionals simply by helping the new (and old) to have the confidence and self-worth to stop playing the victim. Clients will start paying attention — in dollars and respect — once they have no choice, just like any other service or profession.

18 designedgecanada.com/blogs/you_dont_need_to_join_a_design_association_to_succeed/

The arguments against standards, professionalism and maturity are growing stale. While none of these can indicate creativity, and certainly aren’t going to stop someone from hiring someone with a day’s worth of training and an iMac, but it does “recognize the fundamental role that designers now hold within society.”19 Salvage design as a profession founded on process from sliding deeper into the sphere of quickhit effects-for-Facebook Likes. In fact, “graphic design’s survival may rest on its ability to redefine itself in the eyes of its publics.”20 We owe it to ourselves to at least make an attempt at drawing a line in the sand, and doing so the right way; through education, or better put, selfimprovement.

19

David Berman. Do Good Design: How Design Can Change Our World. Peachpit Press, 2008. p138

20

Rob Dewey. “Facing Up To The Reality of Change.” Looking Closer 2: Critical Writings On Graphic Design. Allworth Press, 1997. p.87.

“Wake Me When This

INTERWEB

FAD Is Over!”

Barney Littlefoot

Award-winning Print Designer • 30 Years Experience

“Don’t let me find out this went up on The HuffPo without a

RECIPROCAL LINK and byline, son…”

The Copywizzard

Chiseled From Stone. Written In Snow.

“My teeth aren’t missing, Adobe just ain’t given them the Content-Aware Scaling yet.”

I made

$16!

This Month!

“Toothless Joe”

No Health Care. Totally Has Photoshop.

Rhubi Onrelz

UI/UX Guru • CSS Master • Wordpress Ninja