I've been here before: The reinvention of the graphic design profession. In the late ’80s, a seismic shift changed what designers did and how they did it. This was also during a major recession. Here’s how it was up till then: Clients depended on designers for all their design needs and didn’t have a clue about how it was done. The designer’s in-person, handmade presentation was followed up by a photocopy of the mechanical sent by the designer for client sign off. The printer then picked up the mechanical from the designer. When clients needed note pads, they called the designer. When they needed a business card for a new employee, they called the designer. Perfection was the goal, which designers worked to achieve during the wee hours, “on the [drawing] board.” Loving what they did. Everything was very tangible and mostly billable. The designer went on press because everything got printed.

Then, as the ’80s recession rolled in, the ray of hope for clients was high technology. Their priorities shifted and they embraced computers and software in order to streamline their processes. They started to break their ties with designers. Their secretaries could make their internal newsletter “good enough” using a desktop publishing program. If good design is defined by usefulness, designers’ usefulness was changing rapidly. A cloud of irrelevance hung over the graphic design community. They had to adapt or die.

Yet this adaptation was a huge detour. High tech for designers meant learning, and inventing new ways of communicating using this nascent, erratic media, edging out time that could have been spent exploring the greater dimensions of design. "On the board" became “on the computer.” And ever since, design has been off kilter. Because good design is about effectively communicating concepts through a tactile, intuitive process, not bits and bytes and the limits of the boxy 2-D world of the computer.

About this era, designer Stefan Sagmeister, says, “I felt that the better the New York City economy developed, the worse the quality output of the design community became. I observed this trend rather graphically throughout the first Internet boom during the mid to late ’90s, when everybody was producing crap. My own theory on why my studio, founded in 1993, became so quickly well known is that we were among the few new studios that did not participate in the 'let's do shit and charge them a bundle’ mentality.”

2009: ANOTHER PERFECT STORM
Thousands of young people have entered the design work force since the late ’80s. Yet during this current recession beautiful graphic design is hard to find.

Frank Baseman, Baseman Design, is a designer and educator. He has helped organize college-level design education conferences that include students, teachers and practitioners under the aegis of AIGA¹. But since graphic design programs are often seen as cash cows for schools, students are inevitably admitted who lack the ability to become effective designers. Schools must know that there are far too few design jobs for their graduates. Baseman says, “There are untold thousands of graphic design programs in the U.S. and only about 50 industrial design and 100 architecture programs. Why the difference? A program cannot be certified in industrial design or architecture without the sanction of their respective professional organization.” Not true in graphic design. The AIGA does not certify design programs.

A lot of the design programs are just fine. Ellen Lupton, besides being an accomplished designer, heads the MFA graphic design program at Maryland Institute College of the Arts (MICA). She says, “We expose our students to real-world projects. Students have to document their thinking. And it’s important to pay strict attention to doing things well, such as book-binding, packaging. So not everything is the computer-there are hand skills involved.

“At the graduate level, we encourage a lot of reading. We all need to read newspapers and know what’s going on in the world. Regardless, even though a lot of my students are socially minded, they seem less engaged than previous generations. I don’t see my students marching to the Pentagon.

“Designers are going to have to be prepared for change, be more collaborative, interdisciplinary, less mysterious, more transparent. More and more designers are going to be creating systems and showing their clients how to use them.”

In simpler times graphic designers were taught they could design anything-but that was BC (Before Computers). Baseman sees a steep learning curve ahead, “Now you have to specialize because you have to learn all about the technology of whatever it is you’re designing. Industry is saying you have to know all the programs. Your employment depends on it.”

Max Lewis, a junior at MICA, speaks for a generation facing limited job prospects when he says, “We feel betrayed. We grew up with everything going for us. Now we are seeing everything crumble. What’s our calling? We feel very conflicted.”

THE BRIGHT SIDE
In reality, graphic design’s long love affair with print meant creating ephemera. Graphic designers were part of the problem. But having moved away from print to some degree, designers are emerging as part of the solution: The door to sustainability has opened.

A noble call to action to adhere to a disciplined approach has come from The Designers Accord, a global coalition of 150,000 designers, educators, researchers, engineers and corporate leaders from 100 countries, working together to create positive environmental and social impacts. It states: “The vision of the Designers Accord is to integrate the principles of sustainability into all aspects of design practice and manufacturing. Our mission is to catalyze innovation throughout the creative community by collectively building our intelligence around issues of climate change and humanity, and tackling those challenges with optimism and creativity.

“We advocate inverting the traditional model of competition, and encourage sharing best practices so we can innovate more efficiently and quickly.” This is new for designers, who have typically worked in isolation.
The ultimate challenge is to create beautiful, not just sustainable, design. Why is this so important? Designer Milton Glaser amplifies the primal need for beauty when he says, “We are secretly programmed to respond to beauty as a species. Beauty is the means by which you move towards attentiveness that protects our species as a survival mechanism.”