Just Add Water

Unbelievable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dqm3WNB4b4

You've got to be kidding.
Paint by numbers for magazine design?

When I met Roger Black two years ago, he asked me what I thought the future of publications would be. I had no idea he was thinking in this direction.

I remember when Quark was first introduced (yikes!!!). For several years many corporate communications and marketing managers were firing design firms and having their executive assistants and interns buy the software to produce newsletters and publications at a fraction of the cost. After a while design firms were being called back to fix up the publications that were a dismal mess. This happened when the brilliant managers were getting grief from their bosses, because the publications had become less than mediocre.

There probably will be several brilliant magazine publishers who will jump at the opportunity to save some dough. They will hire some poorly compensated junior person and use this pop-it-in-the-oven smorgasbord approach to put together their magazines. They will save money for a while and will congratulate themselves on their innovative budget management and use of the newest available software. When they start noticing that the other guy's magazines look just like theirs and that their design does not really speak to their readers in their own voice, they will start calling in art directors and designers to fix the problem. Maybe even to redesign the magazine. What a concept!

Get ready, SPD! Pub 45 call for entries will be flooded with a thousand designs that, somehow, all look the same.

really surprising to see who this is coming from.

its interesting to see someone start such a heavily print dependent business as digital explodes. this especially seems dicey for custom publishing as i can see agencies going this route instead of hiring talented teams for custom work.

@rem ... that video is the best thing i've seen all week

Call me an optimist, but I think this is good news for all terrific magazine designers everywhere. This is rock bottom. Rock bottom means there is nowhere to go but up. It happened in the 80s when magazine consultancies, Roger Black's among them, produced cookie-cutter formats irrespective of content. It made the carefully art directed, editorially specific designs shine and spawned a decade of terrific in-house art direction.

And here we are again. Digital media scared editors, weakened designers' power, and now this. Well everyone, hang in there. No one, not the cheapest publisher or editor wants to feel like they bought some cheesy bargain basement generic rip-off. And they will feel that way instantaneously. They will embarrass themselves in front of their peers.

This always shakes out, no matter where it comes from. Trust me. I've watched this cycle for forty years.

I can see this approach m - a - y - b - e satisfying some niche of the low end trade / business publication corner of publishing world who run tighter than the bark on a tree. Let's be honest, you my friend don't want those jobs anyway. I have to think, or at least I hope that Roger and company truly believe that they are offering this service with the intentions that cash strapped (or just plain ol' cheap) organizations can focus on strong imagery.

Dubious me thinks.

Templates are only as good as the teams shepherding them along.

Without a seasoned, talented art crew in place your publication will fail.

It will lack voice, have no clear point of view and fail.

I agree whole-heartedly with Paula. While it seems scary, it is rock bottom. It gives us the opportunity to push back with more creative and personalized responses to editorial challenges. By giving our magazines "perfect typographic personalities", as Dirk put it, we'll always shine past these certainly DIN-heavy templates!

That's pretty worrisome. I sure hope Paula's right about this phenomenon.

Did anyone call them up to see what the prices are like?

Roger: I thought we were supposed to give the client a unique and appropriate look AND "focus on visual content." Now, with all that free time, I can commission a photo shoot or two and play Facebook Scrabble the rest of the day. What's the word score for UNEMPLOYED?

Despite the fact that for years we could see a Roger Black design-factory coming like balls on a tall dog, we all have our panties in a twist seeing his dark vision actualized. RB the new Godzilla of publishing! But seriously... probably not near as much a threat as we fear. Looking at the Ready-Media site, I actually nodded off and hit my keyboard somewhere between the Gilman and Lochmoor page layouts. All of em, every one of them, an Airplane mag ready to rock the cabin with it's um, attention to the almighty grid? It feels like it's more a of a way to wring as much coin as possible from his greatest hits collection and I just can't imagine a smart, progressive emerging publication going anywhere near a canned solution if it ever hopes to be read past the First Class cabin.

I agree with Paula as well.

As quoted by best-selling author; Neil Gaiman:
"The world always seems brighter when you've just made something
that wasn't there before.

You know, Shem, that's pretty bleak. Less for my job than for the future of media and journalism (nee, story telling), I hope you're totally wrong. And as far as that goes, I think anyone here who's ever presided over a redesign knows that you're at least wrong about how much people notice in the media they consume, because there's always a ton of reader mail loving or loathing (or both!) of the work.

But what you wrote crystalized a train of thought I had last night into a full on flashback: A conversation I had a few years ago with [A Very Important Somebody] (names changed to protect the innocent) at [A Big Publisher] I worked for. We were working a late close (they were always well into the wee smalls), and we were bantering back and forth. Having come from a smattering of big and small, corporate and national publishers, the swing of resources was often an interesting reflection as we got stupid in the middle of the night. Like as in, "wow, it's so hot to have InDesign and K4, those [Tiny Fools] I worked for down the block in the [Crappy Orifice] Building only had Quark and OS 9 and it's 2004!! Mwahhahahaha Look at us now with our fancy InDesign and fast macs!"

Anyway, [VIS] was a Publishing Technologist, managed a few big design and prepress installations, and said, "You know, the funny thing about all these resources we have is that they make all of you irrelevant. I could press a couple of buttons on tomorrow, suck the K4 templates into Made4Print, and the editors could just stick their copy into formatted layouts at the click of a couple of buttons. You and everyone on [Super-Duper Creative Director]'s staff could be out of here in a week. But [Big Publishing CEO] doesn't think that's the best way to run the business, and I work for [BPC], so we have fancy software and big fast macs and instead of firing all of you, [BPC] augmented you." I'm paraphrasing but only a little (having consulted with a friend who was there that night, this account doesn't just reflect my personal take-away, but their recollection as well). At the time, [VIS] was probably just being cheeky, but it the whole thing stuck in my craw, because having worked the back-end for long enough, I knew he was completely right. The first time I ever went to a cross media publishing course in the early aughts, I witnessed precisely the installed technology we were using do precisely what was being described.

Thankfully, I think most Big Media CEOs recognize that you can't get something for nothing, and ultimately, people will vote with their pocketbooks. Fascism, (in media or the greater society) or the suppression of differences, has proven time and again far less likeable or positive an influence on Mankind as a harmony of eccentric voices in chorus. I think there's probably money to be had here, but, like Paula says, who wants to be the Big Fat Idiot in the room looking like someone else's brand?

Last night, I thought I wanted to hear from Mr Black on this, but after spending some time on a website which opens with his picture, I think I probably know enough already.

I like the colliding ascender/descender headline feature in the templates... really shows off that you really know the rules, but are breaking them. Nice.

Don't hate me but I think this may not be such a bad thing. These designs are decent. In fact I'd say they're better than 90% of the magazines and newspapers out there. They are generic but of course they have to be to have broad appeal. A good designer will take them and customize them.

This is my best analogy so far: they're like a paint-by-numbers kit. They'll give you the canvas, the outlines and the right colors. The result will not be art. However, the completed painting will have all the right things in all the right places and at the right scale. This is harder than it looks. In my opinion many publications make a lot of mistakes with these basics: font choices, sizes, margins, hierarchy etc...

Furthermore, constructing templates is difficult, meticulous, time consuming work. If these are done well they'll enable fast accurate layout. Designers should have more time to art direct and come up with creative editorial solutions. It's the content and communication that is most important to readers. Bespoke design can make this better - the communication can become more nuanced and artful. We all love to see Fred Woodward's brilliance. But it's a luxury - not affordable for most publications.

This is a threat to designers who make their living doing redesigns for budget conscious publishers. It's not a threat to most art directors: someone still has to put the pages out and commission the art. And it's not a threat to the superstars.

@Luke:

This is a threat to designers who make their living doing redesigns for budget conscious publishers. It's not a threat to most art directors: someone still has to put the pages out and commission the art. And it's not a threat to the superstars.

That may be true, but I think Elizabeth and many others hit the nail on the head quite well. Frankly, I think it's naïve not to understand that this threatens many people who work for/in smaller organizations (not all big brands come in big shiny towers), for people that don't understand what they do. It is the great challenge of our time, communicating what we do, to the corporate brass that don't understand, but in the immediate, there are any number of folks whose good, hard work, is threatened by this kind of kit model. On the bright side, I think Paula's probably right: this kind of thing will cycle back around when one too many Brassies are unwittingly sold into Nosara and they wind up next to each other on the stand. But the immediate concern about the impact this has on all our collective professional progress in communicating who we are and what we do to the bean counters, well, it's huge.

Yes, building templates is hard work. HARD work. But once they're done, they're done. As you point out, too many of them are built by folks who make egregious choices, but I think on this forum at least, all of us represent folks who care about making good choices. Frankly, no matter where one works, there's always time to fold that hard work in with a little planning. The logic behind those basic mistakes you so adeptly point to is precisely the logic that leads to solutions like a kit. CEO says "make it Arial at 11 point because I like the way memos look on my screen in arial and arial comes free", and so it is. CEO says buy Roger Black's Trumbull and give it to the production guys because they cost less, and let art go. Why spend money on type?

Look, I think you make a good point. There's clearly an audience here, the templates are perfectly ok looking, and plenty of good reasons for someone to buy this. But the idea that Roger Black has sold this boat down the river is going to leave many of us trying to explain to someone with a fancy C-title, calculator and an big empty desk why we make $X a year when they can just call Roger and hand our work to Production, or worse, ask IT to automate the whole damn thing. As our staffs dwindle, some of us have already had this conversation one too many times.

I had every intention of avoiding a rant, but I think it just went there. Rant over.

PS: How can we hate you?!

Nooooooooooo everyone, it's ALL good. Let me tell you why.

As an accomplished AD, I've seen it, and worked for them all. The big publishers and wee publishers and everyone in between. The big boys have no need for this sort of thing ... the mid-sizers will be focusing on their brands (or die trying) ... it's the wee guys that need this new stirrup -up into traditional publishing.

There are many of these folks still out there who still feel that there is an 80s caché to the title 'Publisher' and think that magazines will be their vehicle to fame. Especially here on the Left Coast (Vancouver). And there are equally so many designers who really don't understand edit or how to design for it.

The good in this it that we will no longer have to futz with the battle of building something for a client who really doesn't have a clue as to what they need, nor the budget to execute it. Let them pick the plate, then use it as your starting point. Because that is all that this will be. A beginning. And thanks to RM and RB, it'll be a solid one.

And, if you think (or your client thinks) that they will no longer need a designer? It'll be apparent pretty quickly that one still needs someone who understands how to manipulate elements, art direct, and type play, even on a INDD template.

@Luke and Paula ... we're on the same page.

Can't wait to present a client with one of these gems ... then take it from there.

Anna (with 2 n's!)

If it's any consolation -- if they work as poorly and are as buggy as his redesign of The Washington Times' website was, then designers should have nothing to worry about.

It was only a matter of time--an opportunity presented by a shift in culture and Roger seized it in a carefully crafted business-like manner. Would we be so harsh if this were a Microsoft or Abode product? It stings since Mr. Black is one of us [and perhaps because we did not think of it first?]. It will take work from both above and below the median and force some talented art directors and designers to reconsider the publishing industry [among those that have not done so already]. I agree with those above who say this will be used by clients we would not want anyway, but surely there will be instances where non-profits or cultural institutions who appreciate design but are strapped for cash will find themselves considering this as an alternative.

This approach is will not be limited to magazines [watch out web designers and annual report people] or even just graphic design. Other design industries are facing the same issues. i.e.- architects and the advent of Building Information Modeling: http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20100721/design-without-designers

The one thing I can take away from this is it has generated an active and opinionated discussion on design, which is a positive. Last week it was Bruce and Emily in Newsweek talking about social practices. This week Roger has presented something that should make us all think.

P.S. and the "and" between my name and Sam's should not be bold. I'm livid.

Cheers!

Food for thought

Criswell aptly mentioned web design as being a target for this approach.

In fact it's been approached this way on the web for quite some time.

This site your participating in is built on a blogging platform offered by Movable Type. Essentially it's a presentation layer skin and some options draped over a template.

There are a few tweaks ( *ahem* not as many as we would like ) overall however this site is basically straight out of the box.

For better or worse the business model we are debating the ethics of is the same model that enables SPD as a small non-profit group to run and maintain a website at all.

The reality is that small publishers are the ones that need unique building blocks the most. For these businesses, custom templates go a long way to address specific needs and conjure a unique personality. These pubs don’t have the budget for the many “invited guests” that populate the pages of bigger, more successful magazines. Imagine a talk show that couldn’t afford to book many celebs—the host better be good!

Instant pages will get you started, but shortly thereafter the staff will still have to innovate—and evolve—the way they engage their audience. And these days, if you don’t get it right quickly, it may be over for you very fast.

Besides, what we do best—making powerful images and telling stories that reflect the times we’re living in—doesn’t reside in templates.

Thanks to Robert for the fix, and sorry for becoming livid... I'm in a livid management program but sometimes I falter.

Thanks for the additional comments.

The templatization of web while nifty and helpful (and necessary, really) is what I find most frustrating. The freedom to design whatever my brain decides to come up with, isn't there like it is in a printed piece. I'm stuck in the confines of the code which lies beneath. I feel there is a lack of uniqueness in website design that's inherent to the media.

Templates make more sense in web design given all the challenges the designer has to consider (monitor resolution, browser, OS, commenting, blogs etc.) But we're talking about printed magazine design where we can choose the variables: size, paper, spot colors, binding, inserts etc. And these aren't dynamic layouts. When it's done, it's done.

Admittedly, I'm no web designer. I've done it in the past to varying degrees of success. I'm learning and re-building my website with WordPress. So I'm not poo-pooing templates across the board. It may very well be a good choice for some businesses. At the end of the day, I guess it really boils down to a personal choice for me. If an employer decides they want to go the template route with a publication I'm working on, am I working at the right company? Me thinks not.

One would think that Roger Black, with his illustrious publication career, would be more respectful of what we do as designers. This is design for a crowdSPRING audience.

If this is the impetus for many more print magazine startups, then it could be a great thing. Certainly, after a fledgling magazine gets on solid ground a year or two after its launch, one of the first evolutionary steps would be to find a "real" designer and get a custom and unique look and feel.

RB is going were the money is for years. I doubt he designed anything himself for a long time. Magazine templates are not a new concept, it's disappointing he jumped on the money train with his name behind it. On the other hand it gives low-budget publishers a nice tool and I say good riddance to clients who only want to pay peanuts for a custom designed publication.

Design finally has its own Bondian villain! At least there's some relief in that the layouts aren't crowd-sourced and that there's a finite number of them. Or maybe that's Phase II.

WOW. what fertile ground for discussion. Thanks SPD for hosting this conversation, look forward to more.

@STEVE R... you've hit on THE key point here. If we as AD's are worried about this, then we all need to swear off stock photography, stock illustration, and maybe a lot of those derivative fonts. The line of originality is blurring by the day. Interesting.

None of these developments (or our concerns) should seriously impact on our day to day work if we're any good at what we do.

... And the fact you're on here means you're exceptionally talented people with no reason to be threatened by a desktop publishing experiment.

dp

Where was all this moral outrage when all the designers rushed to use dollar stock instead of assigning the images you really wanted to use? When they came for the ......... and when they came for me there was no one to protest. You proved the stock model for them. You help devastate another sector of the industry without looking twice. Karma is a bitch.

Someone mentioned that "if you are an exceptionally talented person you have nothing to fear"...

Great. How about the other 99% who are just really good?

And the fact you're on here means you're exceptionally talented people with no reason to be threatened by a desktop publishing experiment.

I bet that you say that to all the art directors.

I'm curious ... to put some of this in perspective ... how much does it cost for a 48, 60, or 72-page magazine to buy the templates needed to publish? I assume that some very small publications will go with the macaroni and cheese, as is, and others will want Ready-Media to apply special sauce to the logo and possibly other places. How much do the extras cost?

Are costs scaled by client size, market size or circulation? Or, are the costs applied by number of page units or is the same package price applied for everyone regardless of book size or market? The costs will help to put in perspective just how competitive this stock design solution may be, and to what market it will appeal to.

I assume the templates are well made. The magazines posted on their web site are nicely designed, although they do look like siblings, if not first cousins. They are straight forward, simply attired and seem well mannered. It may be that small, specialized publishers who are not competing for ads or readers, will be well served if the cost is low. But, when a small or medium sized publication competes on a professional level, a unique structure designed to communicate their identity, will help to build a following from both their readers and advertisers.

This may be a good product for a particular segment of the magazine industry. There seems be a lot of concern about the overall effect this product/service will have on our craft as designers and art directors. I don't think this will cause lowered expectations from smart publishers, but photography and illustration has certainly suffered from the proliferation of stock images. Time will tell. This does seem to be a smart business model for Ready-Media. Once again, time will tell.

SPD could take a leadership role and promote its members many talents -- even just a simple portfolio gallery with contact information (and transparent freelance rates).

There are many considerably talented designers here who would be more than happy to help small publications with their design at affordable rates, even if they don't have a famous name or a well-oiled sales pitch.

1. If someone buys a template are the font(s) included? If so, is it the complete family?

2. If someone buys a template (and fonts) do they have permission to use the fonts for other jobs?

The magazine design industry is at a crossroads: devalued services (courtesy of celebrity layout templates), soaring paper prices, distribution woes, and advertisers' loss of faith in the magazine industry. How can a magazine (below the realm of Wired, Esquire and GQ) compete with the perfectly opaque white screen of a tablet? The paper quality on many magazines today (including the one I work on) are deplorable. Folios are so thin on many publications that the reader no longer has the sensation that their purchase has any importance. Compare that to the solidness of an iPad. The R-M templates are a bit too late to the Print party and are an act of desperation. Their impact to our industry pales to the three other issues stated above. There will be no solutions to these crippling issues without interaction between members of SPD, ASME, and MPA. My advice: learn as many multimedia skills as possible and be prepared to go all-digital within 5 years. Long live Print.

America's best-selling passenger car is the Toyota Camry, which Edmund's says "has all the character of a washing machine from behind the wheel." The top retailer in the U.S. is Wal-Mart. McDonald's is the most successful food joint in the country.

I guess the bean counters figure that, if Americans flock to buy cars with cookie-cutter designs, clothes and general merchandise devoid of style or quality, and tasteless, nutrition-free food, then why would they care about the design quality of their periodicals, which are typically consumed and discarded as quickly as a Big Mac through one’s digestive tract?

The fact is, as designers, we are making deliberate, educated decisions regarding presentation that focus primarily on telling stories visually (not just picking a pretty font or dropping the right-sized image into the appropriate container). The craft of visual storytelling should be to provide our readers with a high-performance vehicle for accessing information, an elegant and ingenious mechanism for organizing this information, and a savory experience while digesting the news of the day.

We aren't selling french fries and rubber duckies here folks. We are on the front line of storytelling — a publication’s design is the first thing that engages the reader with sensory information, and it impresses upon them the hierarchy, weight, and general newsworthiness of information. Design is pivotal to our mission of providing a sacred service to the public, which is the cornerstone of the democratic process. We strive for excellence in the presentation of every story and page — though we may not always meet that lofty benchmark, especially in the era of shrinking budgets, fewer resources, and reductions in staffing. But our readers at least deserve our commitment to “aim for the superb” in writing, editing, photography, and design, especially considering the importance of the service we, as journalists, are providing.

If someday young boys drool over photos of a Toyota Camry in the pages of Car and Driver (as I did in the early 80s over the Lamborghini Countach LP500S), Wal-Mart exclusively provides the wardrobes for those on the Red Carpet on Oscar night, and Georges Perrier serves his Hanger Steak in Big Mac Secret Sauce instead of his signature Sauce Bordelaise, I'll be forced to reconsider the merits of the "just add water" concept.

I maintain that there can be no template for excellence. A template's purpose is to make things consistent. By definition, to be excellent, one must stand out. So, I choose not to "just add water" to this idea, but instead, would prefer to water it with a fluid of a different variety.

“Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.” —Samuel Johnson

Writer/editor/typographer and all-around smart guy John D. Barry has added some thoughts on the Ready-Media project on his blog. It's good reading: http://johndberry.com/blog/. Barry is the former editor and publisher of U&lc and is the current president of ATypI. He knows a lot about templates and type.

A Black-Eye

Black and company are suggesting to their target audience that this "complicated" thing called design will be done by their A-list Ready Media designers so that they can concentrate on what is really important--"the Content". Sorry, design is content. Content is design. They are suggesting a clothesline from which to hang content.

In the beginning there is the idea, then the creation or fulfillment of the idea. There is a reason that the idea is placed at the beginning. Then everything else follows suite. Every decision reinforces the creation. It’s as old and as simple as the old saw "form follows function". Black suggests that a list of ready-mades that worked for another creation might be shoehorned onto the users unique creation.

Black and his boys might raise the level of newsletter and corporate communications design being cranked out in Microsoft Word templates from in-house PR departments, mail room personal, secretaries, and that guy down the hall who took that art correspondence course, but in the long run this is nothing more than a money making venture from a bunch of editorial designers who are not getting the big jobs anymore.

I don't knock these guys for trying to make a living, but just be honest about what is being sold and why.

Corporate heads may soon be thinking of how they can dispense with writers and editors. After all we have all heard the expression, "This thing practically writes itself."

There are precedents to this throughout our industry.

You can build a website from templates using Wordpress (or less sophisticated tools). Our invoices are templated. Microsoft Word offers templates for every document imaginable. We can buy well-cut and considered type for $30 a face. I'm old enough to remember the outrage when cheap downloadable type was available—it was going to be the end of design as we knew it—and in a way, it was. It made design better... I got to spend more time thinking ans less time specing type and waiting for galleys. In fact, a pretty talented designer who posted a comment just a few statements above developed a set of templates for HP that served as both an improvement of the template form and a useful aid in getting across the context of design at the street-level. No harm, no foul...

Templates are tools in response to a demand. Our responsibility to our profession is to help increase the level of discernment on the street-level. We are design thinkers (as opposed to text box shufflers or style sheet applicators). This is a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate the value of what we do by contrast with the work done without the insights we have as design thinkers.

A favorite statement of mine from Virilio's Pure War [ Semiotext(e) ] : Every technology produces, provokes, programs a specific accident. The invention of the airplane is the invention of the plane crash.

I don't think this is as cynical as it appears initially. It highlights a part of invention that is simply inevitable. A user-friendly open source community is a great invention. Creative folks craved it and love it. Unfortunately, open source, by definition, isn't just for creatives. It's for everyone.

Sure I can see that more access to better "organized" publishing content in the world using whatever tools necessary to create forward movements that are overall better organized with a lower time-to-market rate. That's a tremendous benefit. However, what gets me excited is when design thinkers invest less energy in designing vehicles that only marginally benefit from their thought leadership, but focus more intensely on the game shifting publications that call for cowboys and pioneers. That's what keeps us from becoming commodities. Doing work for clients who only expect (and hence will only pay for) mediocrity brings all of us down. Forward them the link to the templates and polish the relationships with those that know the difference. And get in front of business people in the forums where they convene and respectfully share the difference between thought and template.

Well said, Mitch. We all know that good templates can save designers who know how to use them a lot of time, but whenever a new technical innovation comes out—the Mac itself, QPS, K4—publishing companies want to know if investing in it will allow them to cut budgets and jobs. My concern is that companies will try to use these pre-fab pubs as a way to hire less-experienced professionals and pay them less, in an attempt to make more money, and may only realize how misguided this strategy is once the quality suffers.

The truth is that technology used efficiently can take away a lot of tedious task work, giving designers more time to develop a creative solution. It can also save money and resources, sometimes. But, most importantly, no amount of technology is a substitute for an experienced designer.

Very interesting responses everyone! I believe the “standardization” of everything creative including innovative thinking at the university level (now run by big business), is an attack on the creative, independent spirit of humanity.

It reminds me of the years I used to give tins of homemade cookies to everyone for Christmas. Did they remember the other manufactured presents I gave them? NO! It was always about the homemade cookies made with love they remembered. That’s the analogy I am making with the templates…someone will always want to buy the boxed cookies because they won’t want to take the time to make them. Like someone said on is topic thread, it will be less hassle for a designer to use templates for difficult clients who don’t want to pay but ultimately, they may not be as memorable. On the upside, we don’t have to struggle with technical issues. Difficult clients who don’t want to pay or appreciate what we do are bad enough.

Technology is a double-edged sword. I am thrilled that I don’t have to do some of the manual stuff I had to do in school to make a presentation. Pantone paper anyone? On the other hand, I am saddened by what is happening. It almost seems as if our “design thinking” is not appreciated, encouraged or shared in the same way it used to be.

When I was at Ontario College of Art in the early 80’s, the Communication and Design floor was a hustling, bustling place where our desks were in an open concept foyer. In late October, brilliant works of student art were showcased. It was a chance to admire the individual design thinkers, illustrators, photographers and experimental artists at the college.

In early November 2008, I went to visit OCA(D), now a “university.” As I walked up the steps to the C&D Department, I was excited to see the students’ work showcased along the walls just like in the 80’s. When I got there, nothing was up on the walls. The open foyer that once was home to many desks with artists in lively conversation sharing ideas and stories was a pretty bleak place and not a sole was around.

I remembered when Dr. Fleck was pushing for OCA to become a university. There was a huge uproar from experimental artists, designers, illustrators, photographers and some teachers. They even went so far as to make buttons saying “Fleck Off” which was hilarious at the time but what good did it do? They got what they wanted. Some teachers up and quit in protest through the years when they found out that practical classes were going to be replaced by more “theory” classes.

I have a university degree too and trust me, it took me 4 years of OCA to unwind and find my design thinking voice. Years of freelancing actually helped too.

Technology has effects beyond design. It has leveled hierarchies and has scrubbed off our identities to some degree. It’s up to us to navigate through the shifting language. This conversation sure helps me not feel alone about what I think is happening in the graphic design profession. Some great designers have left the industry and I can’t say that I blame them.

I read in an Applied Arts article about an illustration teacher who was concerned that his students were having a difficult time expressing themselves emotionally in their art. I wonder if technology and its effects have something to do with that.