Is graphic design losing its relevance?
According to AIGA Designer 2025 Report, the US Labor of Statistics tracks and predicts changes in the employment of Americans. It estimates 0-1% growth in traditional graphic design positions between 2014 and 2024, below the 7% growth in all sectors of employment.
Does this means that the graphic design profession is disappearing?
In the last months I have seen an increasing number of different tools to assembly visually outstanding presentations, interactive dashboards, statistical charts and so on. That’s not to say the democratization of photography with even better smartphone’s cameras, data-driven layouts and interface generation.
Summing it up, the increasing offer of graphic tools and the theoretical weakness of a lot of undergraduate courses may be having the same effect that desktop publishing and laser printers made in the past with typographers and photocomposer operators. They made obsolete the mere juxtaposition of type and image using photographic equipment and democratized the access to layout production.
Some old professors that followed all these changes are retiring now and may not have interest on alerting young graphic designers that their profession is running a risk. Students may not see the rise and fall of graphic design, due to a lack of critical sense.
So, what is your opinion about this? Is graphic design really losing its relevance, being too slow to adapt the undergraduate education to the new communication paradigms?
M.Sc. Ricardo Martins
Federal University of Parana
Curitiba - Brazil
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