The Future of Graphic Designers
Graphic design is one of the branches of design,
this activity with a changing definition but of which we can recall that given
by the AFD. Design is a creative, multidisciplinary and humanist intellectual
process, whose the goal is to deal with and provide solutions to everyday
problems, large and small, related to economic, social and environmental
issues." (For the full definition)
Graphic design, as a design activity applied to
communication and information, is directly shaped by the dominant ideology or
the ideological movements that contest it, thus producing different "graphic" currents.
The layout
of the media, the writing of the content, the graphic choices are intimately
dependent on the objectives sought by the designers and their sponsors.
Should we
deduce from this that graphic design is only a tool without its own soul? A
zealous servant but without autonomy? And what to think then of its future at
the dawn of this period of great upheaval which is coming?
This last
question is the very subject of this article, we could rephrase it as follows:
in a world to be reinvented for humanity far from consumerism, does graphic
design have a place?
Note that in
this article I often speak of graphic designer, that the many, even majority,
professionals who exercise in this activity do not hold it against me, the
French language is thus made, but it is addressed to all graphic designers
without distinction of gender, age, religion, sexual orientation or
typographical preference!
To conclude
this introduction, I specify that this reflection was born from my
confrontation with reality as a graphic designer and teacher in graphic design.
It was fuelled by numerous discussions with graphic designers, graphic design
teachers, and students wondering about the very meaning of their (future)
activity. These questions essentially arise from four observations:
The
accelerated exhaustion of creative people due to the conditions in which they
carry out their activity;
The
suffering of students torn between their quest for meaning in an
anxiety-provoking society and the need to fit into a productivity mould;
The loss of
credibility of our profession, confined more and more to the role of serving
hatch;
The search
by all for a new balance in life and a new meaning to give to our common
adventure.
I. the Graphic Designer, a zealous servant?
Without
entering into a debate of scholars, which others have fuelled with much more
relevance than I could do, let us note all the same that graphic design, as an
activity, has not always been confined to slavishly follow the dominant
ideology. It conceals, in its very nature, a propensity to seek rupture and
therefore the questioning of the established order, at least in its aesthetic
dimension.
To take just
one example, let's cite "Slow Design" which appeared in the early
2000s under the impetus of Alastair Fouad-Luke, an English academic, who
advocates, like the slow movement of which he is a part, of to extract these
activities from the constantly increasing acceleration of economic life in
favour of a time of realization more in line with a rhythm favouring
creativity, quality and fulfilment. This philosophy has been taken up by some
graphic designers (in the broad sense).
It is clear,
however, that this conception of the activity of design, while meeting with
broad approval within the community of designers, has not been retained as a
form of organization of our activity.
The problem
being that insidiously a shift has taken place from content to form, the
designer having mainly put himself at the service of the dominant ideology,
ultra-liberal capitalism, not to mention it. Thus, the role of the graphic
designer, in the service of the consumption of goods and pre-chewed ideas, is
too often limited to visual bluster or slogans of convenience.
II. The current place of graphic design
One thing is
clear, no offense to our egos, the graphic designer is now essentially a
specialized worker responsible for selling while “making it look good”. A
visual technician, a cog in the system who is now only sporadically a seeker of
meaning through graphic invention.
Creativity,
this word that we use until indigestion, is no more than a shadow of itself,
glorifying to excess the slightest graphic flourish, the slightest motion
design, the smallest colorimetric audacity. While it should be our bulwark
against standardization, our spur to force us to be more demanding. The
digitization of the economy has further reinforced this trend. Indeed, if we go
beyond the semantic veil of digital newspeak, we objectively observe that the
majority of great speeches are commercial verbiage calling on poorly mastered
notions. Who does not talk about SEO, SMO, and AdWords in front of his clients
above all to dress in the clothes of the expert when he fears having to
implement them?
For the sake
of appeasement, let's recognize that this is often less a question of
intellectual dishonesty when the graphic designer puts on the trappings of a
digital strategist, than a lack of time to train, ease or ridiculous budgets
for produce with thought and intelligence. Because, in this drift of our
practices, the responsibilities are shared and the sponsor always wanting more,
faster for less is not exempt from reproach.
But the
reality is there, always having to do faster for an ever-decreasing cost, the
designer is often content to apply “graphic tricks” without being interested in
the substance. It then becomes just a cog in the wheel of mass consumption. A
cog undermined by resale sites at prices bordering on the indecency of
preformatted graphic solutions produced at a loss by graphic designers in
search of a few euros to survive.
Worse, after
7 decades of ideological structuring, the graphic designer has a whole panoply
of semantic tools aimed at “dressing in virtue” what he promotes, without
worrying about anchoring speeches and arguments in any factual reality. He
shamelessly clears himself of his client's lies as he participates in their
promotion. Going even further, the tools of marketing and data analysis, kings
in the area of Big Data, dissect the flaws of the "targets" to
better use their credulities and their "weaknesses".
In this
context, the graphic designer, accepting his role as a simple cog without
critical sense, becomes an accomplice of a system that cannibalizes the planet
and exploits mankind.
We could go
further in this analysis in order to weight and clarify the arguments, this
will perhaps be the subject of a future article. But for now, our purpose is
elsewhere.
Because if
we are at a turning point in our ultra-liberal capitalist societies which
pushes us to imagine a new path of development for our societies, as all the
indicators seem to indicate (climate emergency, social inequalities, etc.),
moving towards more sobriety and less consumerism, the question is to know what
place will be attributed to the graphic designer in a society of which we know
nothing yet?
III. Tomorrow graphic designers
At.
Reflection framework
Here we are,
what will be the place
Of the
graphic designer tomorrow,
Will he have
one (many civilizations?
Have prospered without this
Corporation
And if so, which one?
Above all,
let's try to be honest
And modest.