Graphic Design as an Occupation

Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 2:58 PM
To: Jones, Calvin
Subject: Cheryl needs your help

Dear sir,

My name is Cheryl. I used to be a senor graphic designer, and I had worked as graphic designer for more than 10 years. Since I had baby, I've been staying at home as a full-time mother for almost 5 years. Luckily, I'm eligible for applying government training fund so that I could have chance to get retraining to upgrade my expertise before restarting my career.

However, many people and even my case manager are not bullish on graphic design field. They keep telling me that this field is shrinking instead of growing, and government won't invest money in such a depressed industry.

As a graphic designer with long-term work experience, I really don't want to give up my specialty, and it is what the passion I have for. For getting the approval from government, I need to find some articles to prove that graphic deign field is not dying. I'm writing for asking for your help. Please support me by describing the status and the future of graphic design industry; and I will use them as reference to help me convince the Service Canada.

Thank you very much. Best wishes,

Cheryl

Jul.23.2009

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Hi Cheryl:

Sorry for the delay in responding to your e-mail message, our team at the province's Public Affairs Bureau has been quite busy.

Your message caught me off-guard and has prompted me to really consider my role as a graphic designer in society and whether or not this role is fading as you mentioned your employment case manager suggests. Quite the contrary, I would suggest this applied art has always been overlooked and misunderstood because of its ubiquity. In an increasingly knowledge-based environment, I submit the role of the graphic designer will only increase in importance.

Lately, an increase in desktop computer technology has replaced many of the older "hands-on" technologies like waxing, paste-up, camera output, and such. These technologies, it should be noted, are not the heart of graphic design. These tasks could be now described as "desktop publishing" which is simply the technology-based task of typesetting documents and making them "pretty." This should not be confused with graphic design. Graphic design goes well beyond lining text-boxes up on a page and adding a bit of colour and photos to a document.

Rather, as the Graphic Designers of Canada's website explains, "Designers have put a face to our government, institutions, products and services. Cereal boxes, postage stamps, transit shelter advertising, textbook, magazine and newspaper design, video graphics, websites, logos even shopping bags, are all produced by trained professional designers."

Graphic designers do put a "face" on ideas and institutions and give them identities. Not just the institution's corporate "logo", but the entire way an idea or an institution presents itself visually. Think of our own country, Canada. The flag itself is a stellar piece of graphic design which gives an otherwise very difficult political concept to grasp an instantly recognizable visual identity or "face". Further, the federal government's website has been designed by a graphic designer, as are all of its visual communications (like the attachment about the importance of intellectual property, of which graphic design is a part). Just because graphic design is easy to digest (to the point of it almost being "invisible") shouldn't diminish its important role in any communications strategy.

It's interesting to note that the Prime Minister's wife, Laureen Harper, studied graphic design at SAIT in Alberta.

I've attached a couple of documents that may be relevant to your cause. I hope that all of this helps. While graphic design practitioners certainly won't be the top income earners in society, because of its impact on the members of society, graphic design is quite a worthwhile pursuit, and it certainly isn't going to fade away.

Cheers,
Calvin Jones

Federal Government's "Job Futures" website:
http://www.jobfutures.ca/noc/5241.shtml
"Outlook To 2009"
Your work prospects will continue to be FAIR because:
The employment growth rate will likely be average because of the emergence of information technologies, and an increasing number of websites.
Although the retirement rate will likely be average, the number of retiring workers should contribute to job openings.
The number of job seekers will likely exceed the number of job openings.
"Preparing for the Competition"
You're more likely to succeed if you have strong computer skills for presentations, design, and project management.

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/designer-of-2015-competencies

http://www.gdc.net/education/index.htm

http://ucda.com/careers.lasso

Infrastructure 20090808

In 2005, the City of Ottawa embarked on a social infrastructure project to examine the social elements of public infrastructure.

"Infrastructure is generally conceived as 'hard' infrastructure such as primary roads and water treatment plants. More recently there has been a great deal of interest and discussion about 'soft' infrastructure like hospitals, community and recreational facilities, public spaces, social housing, volunteer networks and community based agencies. The term 'infrastructure' is increasingly coming to include this 'soft' or 'social' infrastructure. This is because such infrastructure increases social cohesion in urban cores, resulting in stronger municipal and national economies."

The goal of the study was to determine how investment in social infrastructure, particularly housing (which is identified in the project's research backgrounder as a key infrastructure in shaping the perception of the quality of places), contributes to the competitiveness of cities.

The research backgrounder also ponders the question, "Why do governments feel compelled to invest in certain forms of infrastructure but leave or re-designate others for private provision?"

Perhaps one possible solution is where the municipality's governing body sits on the political spectrum and the range of use a particular infrastructure asset has. Consider both "soft" and "hard" infrastructure assets like a toilet and sewer, for example. Consider, also, the municipality as a collective of taxpayers concerned (less or more so depending on where the municipality's governing body sits on the political spectrum) about the collective's well-being. An entire city block or neighbourhood of single households ties into a common sewer thereby justifying the collective's expense to create and maintain the "hard" sewer infrastructure to dispose of the collective's waste safely. However, if the collective is more conservative-leaning, it is perhaps more difficult for it to justify the expense of collected taxpayer dollars on the "soft" private-use, single household toilet initiating the sewage, despite the fact that clean, properly operating sewage disposal means overall healthier, and thereby perhaps happier and more productive, members of the collective.

Infrastructure 20090807

Beautiful summer holidays this year in Ontario, Quebec and the homeland, Saskatchewan. Happening upon The National Gallery of Canada's Canadian collection in Ottawa on Canada Day was a sublime, unexpected joy. The oil studies by Tom Thomson are sumptuous. At McNally Robinson in Saskatoon, I was reminded of the blanket statements of the great Bob Boyer when I stumbled across a gorgeous book by the artist entitled Powwow. Boyer's painted blankets, holding paint as deep as the blanket will allow, speak of spiritual calm, heritage and betrayal. They are a real inspiration for these infrastructure blankets.

Is perhaps the infrastructure we develop a direct extension of our physical needs, as illustrated here? Perhaps the body drives and builds infrastructure.