Over the years the printing industry has pared down. The computer, which was supposed to help, ended up eating jobs. Gone are the Keyliners, Paste-up Artists, Illustrators, Photographers, Typesetters, Proofreaders, Platemakers and more. I bet you can only think of one job that a Stripper does. 20 years ago it was also a person who arranged negatives to create printing press plates. Now all of this and more is dumped into the lap of one employee. The Graphic Designer.
Other duties are also included in this package, such as copywriting, editorial, pagination, customer service, sales, purchasing, shipping and receiving, and even housekeeping. Many duties clash with the creative process.
The Graphic Designer will be expected to go from pure design creativity to algebra without stripping gears. The Graphic Designer will be interrupted a thousand times during their design to do things like answer the phone, take walk-ins at the counter, handle computer problems, explain for the umpteenth time the design process to someone who has no experience in design whatsoever - whether customer or employer
...the list is truly endless. It's become a complete circus of duties.
When is this person supposed to get time to be creative?
That answer is never. Now creativity has to be done on the fly. Most times projects are to be completed in the creative department in under an hour, often times in under 15 minutes. This is a lot harder to do than it sounds, even with the assistance of the computer, its a rapid and ugly process. To shortcut this, the Graphic Designer will fall back on templates made from past projects or repeat layouts that they're comfortable with, because the job is not done here. Oh no...
The Graphic Designer is also expected to proof their work. That means no typos and spell check doesn't catch most of them. Phone numbers, names, addresses, dates, foreign words (my personal pet-peeve) are all things that spell check doesn't catch and auto-cowrecked makes things worse. A lot of times Graphic Designers have paragraph breaks that are only for design sake and don't need a capital first letter at every line. Proofing doesn't end there. You also have to make absolutely certain that sizing is correct, alignment is spot on, and sometimes even pagination is right.
Don't forget that impossible deadline! Usually set by someone with no concept of how long it really takes to do a job properly, deadlines can be as impractical as it gets. I had an employer who wanted me to do 4 monthly publications with one section not coming in until 1 hour before deadline. That was 1 entire magazine every week and each one had the hour-to-deadline section. Oh, and I was allowed to "help" with the quarterly coffee-table magazine too.
Wouldn't you think that a person who does the duties of what was once 10 employees would get paid really well? That's where you'd be wrong. Back in 1972, my mom was a Keyliner. She made $12 an hour to simply do Paste-up and Keylining (drawing lines with technical pens) with some Illustration. My last full time job paid me $12 an hour, in 2013. My last part time job paid $14 with no benefits.
Don't forget that a Graphic Artist isn't a real artist. I was told that once by someone literally looking down their nose at me. I was informed that Graphics is a low art and that high art was done by real artists, therefor Graphic Artists weren't real artists.
So I replied, "You're right. Artists can do art for themselves. Graphic Artists have to do art for someone else's vision. We have to interpret someone else's feelings and expressions who has no concept of how to take those visions out of their head and make them into something real. We have to use our own creativity to make something for someone else who may not like that design, tell you it's crap and to start again. We don't have the option of sticking our noses in the air and telling the customer that they just don't understand art. We have to then take our beautiful art and trash it and start again with something completely different than what we originally envisioned. I wish I had it as easy as a real artist."
Now keeping abreast of the constantly changing technology is another matter. Whether self-taught or college trained, every Graphic Artist has to constantly retrain to keep up. They also have to constantly invest in new technology to keep up. The design programs are ungodly expensive and they update twice a year. The program designers have made it impossible not to keep purchasing new updates by making their files unopenable by older software. A designer absolutely must keep on top of new software, or become obsolete.
The turn-over at these jobs is astronomical too. I'm now an aging artist. Many places automatically assume the can't afford me. If I manage to get hired, I'll get hired in to fix a huge mess that someone who was inexperienced made. After some time has passed and things are running smoothly, the employer will look at the upcoming raise and then hire another inexperienced kid straight out of school, have me train them and then lay me off before I can get my raise. Now you know how the huge mess happened in the first place. That's why I freelance now.
Freelance opens up another whole can of worms. Having to pay double taxes. Having to compete with India and China. Slow-pays and no-pays. Drumming up (or wringing out) business. It's a double edged sword.
Why would any sane person do this to themselves, you ask?
Because we love art.
Because we love to create.
Because we love to see our designs out there.
Because of that shocked look of pleasure on a customer's face when you take their concept and give it wings.
Because we thrive on challenge.
Because we sleep, eat and breathe deadline.
Because those of us who really know the field are a dying breed.
Because what else is there for a Creative to do that will consistently pay the bills?
So when your Graphic Designer says $35 an hour, don't let sticker shock get you down. It really does cost a lot for them to do business and they do so much more than just draw pictures. More than anything else remember this:
KEEP CALM
AND LET THE
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
HANDLE IT.
