Hi David,

Welcome back to Australia! I hope your trip went well.

David wrote:

in the big scheme of things I don't think it
makes me more or less of a designer whether I use somebody else's
kerning pairs, fitted into the software in the form of routine
computational look-up tables, or whether I use my own. Either way, I'm
doing the designing. Its just a rather simple issue of the level at
which I chose to exercise control on a routine basis.

In that respect I'm no different to a carpenter who chooses to use a
power tool rather than a hand tool because it's quicker, but knowing
that the power tool will not always give the same type of finish as a
hand tool. ...
===

One way of looking at things is to look at the relative distribution, over
time and space, of the design activity contributions to a particular design.

For example, a couple of years ago I was investigating the design processes
for outdoor extreme weather clothing of UK based companies. This is the sort
of clothing used in mountains. The reason for looking at this design process
was to identify where hard worn design knowledge was lost over time and why
after extensive design and textile research and the development of many new
fabrics and clothing designs, much of contemporary extreme clothing only
performed as well as extreme clothing from up to a century ago. Part of the
findings was that recently design decisions had become  distributed across
designers, clothing technicians, several levels in  Chinese manufacturing
firm's processes, retail buyers, fashion design  educators, garment testers,
fabric  manufacturing firms, fabric supply firms, shops, fashion color
forecasters, and warehouse logistics programmers.

Of all of these, the designers made only a small contribution - mainly
silhouette, profile and features - most of the design work was undertaken by
others, who often overruled the designers anyway.

In the above sense, it is possible to see that much graphic design work is
undertaken by the software designers of companies such as Adobe, and the
design researchers on whose findings the software development is based,
rather than the graphic designer sat in front of the software. I feel your
carpenter's power saw instance is different because  the role of the tool is
somewhat different. The power saw does not make judgments that can
substitute for the designer's judgments. A more similar case to graphic
would be the use of computerised automated spindle carving machines (the
ones that carve ornate banister spindles), or say Shima Seiki's computerised
wholegarment knitting machines that go a long way to working out the most
appropriate ways to knit a designed garment. In both of these I would regard
the design activity to be distributed in ways in which the designer makes
much less of a contribution than when they design and craft the item
themselves.

===

A`pro pos of which, I was struck by one remark you made which is a
claim for which I would like to see the evidence:
On 19/08/2009, at 5:03 AM, Terence Love wrote:

> The reality is that design professionals now produce  around 800%
> more work
> per day and of much higher quality.

Terry, where does this 800% figure come from, and what do you mean by
'much higher quality'? Much higher than what?
===

The 800% improvement? I based this on three factors. The first is a personal
assessment of reductions in time over a range of graphic design tasks over
the last 20 years. Examples of such tasks are reworking an image (crop,
burn, colorise etc), typesetting large and small documents, create line art,
pre-flight testing, create traps, chokes and spreads, create 2 and 4 color
artwork, printed forms, computerised forms...  My personal reflections
suggested 400% was way too low and 1200% was too high and on reflection I
homed in on a best guess that improvement was about 800%. This is supported
by  triangulation via a simple comparison to Adobe's claims of productivity
improvement this year. 800% productivity over 20 years  is around 10% per
year which seems reasonable or possibly a bit low. Another support is the
reduction in the number of graphic designers needed by large design firms
over the last 20 years where several times there have been step reductions
in personnel due to technology. For example around 5 years ago many design
firms reduced their headcount to about a third whilst keeping output
substantially constant.  On the quality side, I simply compared run of the
mill graphic work from 20 years ago with now. Best of practice with no time
and money spared has not changed as much, but the everyday quality of
graphic design visually has to my eyes seen significant improvements over
the last 20 years.

All the best,
Terry

===