Hi Gunnar,

I agree with you, somebody needs to make the basics.

But for me the problem is well represented on the description of the job graphic designers do.

Look the description of the profession in
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/arts-and-design/graphic-designers.htm#tab-2 <https://www.bls.gov/ooh/arts-and-design/graphic-designers.htm#tab-2>

This page states that:
Graphic designers typically do the following:
• Meet with clients or the art director to determine the scope of a project
• Use digital illustration, photo editing software, and layout software to create designs
• Create visual elements such as logos, original images, and illustrations that help deliver a desired message
• Design layouts and select colors, images, and typefaces to use
• Present design concepts to clients or art directors
• Incorporate changes recommended by clients or art directors into final designs
• Review designs for errors before printing or publishing them
Graphic designers combine art and technology to communicate ideas through images and the layout of websites and printed pages. They may use a variety of design elements to achieve artistic or decorative effects.
Graphic designers work with both text and images. They often select the type, font, size, color, and line length of headlines, headings, and text. Graphic designers also decide how images and text will go together on a print or webpage, including how much space each will have. When using text in layouts, graphic designers collaborate closely with writers, who choose the words and decide whether the words will be put into paragraphs, lists, or tables. Through the use of images, text, and color, graphic designers can transform statistical data into visual graphics and diagrams, which can make complex ideas more accessible.

In the Labor of Statistics we can read:
The projected change in employment of graphic designers from 2016 to 2026 varies by industry. For example, employment of graphic designers in newspaper, periodical, book, and directory publishers is projected to decline 22 percent from 2016 to 2026. However, employment of graphic designers in computer systems design and related services is projected to grow 20 percent over the same period.

So, for me, it is not a question of abandoning the craft, the making, but a matter of shifting from “object creation” to “value creation”. They should still be making, but doing things concerning to “attend the needs” instead of just “doing goods (in the sense that the Marketing calls as “good dominant logic”). And with the decline of paper-based magazines and newspapers, designers could be taught to make “different things”, like communication targeted to “computer systems design".

If designers still focus on "Using digital illustration, photo editing software, and layout software to create designs” I guess we will have a problem when a lot of these “creations” could be done easily without the assistance of professionals, just using apps, online services, automatic data-driven layouts. Yes, this may be a contradiction. But it is the trend.

Regards,

Ricardo Martins


> On 19 Feb 2018, at 00:22, Gunnar Swanson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> On Feb 17, 2018, at 10:58 AM, Gunnar Swanson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Ricardo--Will you help an old professor out with some indication of what "the new communication paradigms" are?
>
>
> Ricardo was nice enough to answer my query off list and linked me to several references I was familiar with and a couple that were new to me. Thanks, Ricardo. For anyone who, like me, was curious specifically what he meant by "new communication paradigms," he quoted an AIGA publication:
>
>>> "Under an object-centered, mechanical definition of design practice, the designer is seen as an expert who decides on the attributes of a finished product which is delivered
>> to management to solve a problem.
>>
>>> Under an organic, systems-oriented definition of practice, opportunities and insights emerge from anywhere within the organization or system.
>>
>>> The designer steps into this context as a facilitator who builds consensus around ideas that evolve under changing conditions."
>
> I don't expect to have time soon to say anything full and coherent on this subject. I'm not even completely sure what I have to say (or if whatever I might have to say is full and coherent anyway) but I have a couple of random comments and questions:
>
> Like so many things (and especially like so many things written on this list), my reaction is yes and no. Yes; the graphic design trade as it was at any moment is fading. Terry and others have pointed out, much of the activity of a graphic designer in 1982 is no longer part of a professional domain. Technology has moved us to a point where many things we used to be able to bill for are done automatically for us by machines and machines have allowed others to do for themselves some things they might have hired us to do in the past. (I had lunch yesterday with Lou Danziger who pointed out that I came up in a era with Letraset and markers so I missed out on comping small type in gouache; I guess the job in the '70s wasn't the same as the job in the '50s, either.)
>
> And yes; this means that the activities of people who are called graphic designers or may have been called graphic designers at some point have changed and are going to continue to change.
>
> On the other hand, many calls for change confuse me. I don't want to reduce Terry to the role of straw man but sometimes his calls for technical (and particularly math) skills don't come off as "here's how these technical skills will help designers operate" as much as "designers should abandon the sinking ship, grow up, and become programmers or something else I approve of." (Of course, the job of a programmer is changing, largely due to previous tasks being automated but that is, perhaps, another conversation.) I have some similar problems with aspects of AIGA's "Designer 2025." It says:
>
>>> College design students should:
>> • Address design problems at various scales (at the level of components, products, systems, and communities);
>> • Identify and visually map the interdependent relationships among people, places, things, and activities in a complex system;
>> • Locate areas of friction and leverage points where small changes or external forces could produce big differences in the state of the system;
>> • Frame design investigations for enhancing the overall effectiveness of the system, not just individual components;
>> • Evaluate design solutions for their short- and long-term physical, social, cultural, technological, and economic effects; and
>> • Identify the nature of values and modes of inquiry in various disciplines that contribute to the successful solution of complex design problems.
>
> At East Carolina University, we work to make sure our students are acting and thinking in ways that will leave them ready to deal with various opportunities. I have to worry about dismissals of making and craft, and of objects and products, however. If everyone abandons the serious consideration of form, what does that do to the future of our manufactured environment?
>
> Certainly, it does not serve a student well to give the message that graphic design (or much of anything else) is a stable activity and that they should settle in to a life of limited scope. I wonder, however, how we might expect to train students to "[e]valuate design solutions for their short- and long-term physical, social, cultural, technological, and economic effects" in four years even if we abandon having them learn to how to, pardon the expression, design. The goals stated above are noble but the idea that an undergraduate education would be sufficient to prepare someone to launch a professional career doing those things strikes me as more than a bit ambitious.
>
> I do not think that a university education should be entry-level vocational ed but I also know that nobody gets a third job until they've had first and second jobs. I'd love to hear a more detailed description of the possible career path of those trained to deal with the large and complex problems we deem worthy of their attention. How does one start out mapping complex systems and how many such jobs are there?
>
> The other problem I have with such reforms of design practice and education is the assumption that, in Terry's arguments, either my design students should become applied mathematicians or should be cast out. Many of my students would not be good prospects for a math-based career. They do well in artifact creation. Some move into careers akin to the description of "Designer 2025" and some do not. The ones who do are equipped with a way of thinking that used to be common in our society and is now quite rare. It is thinking through making.
>
> Yes, design students should be introduced to the "Design 2025" competencies but a real attempt to bring someone to a sophisticated level of those competencies would by necessity make learning craft and thinking-through-making fall by the wayside.
>
> In short, how does anyone teach these lofty goals in a manner that prepares students to do this lofty stuff? Why do we disapprove of doing stuff that isn't properly seven years in the future? Why do we assume that there actually are opportunities for everyone in these "new paradigms"?
>
>
> Gunnar
>
> Gunnar Swanson
> East Carolina University
> graphic design program
>
> http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Gunnar Swanson Design Office
> 1901 East 6th Street
> Greenville NC 27858
> USA
>
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>
>
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