The decadence of the professional designer

By Abraham C. Millán

Note for foreign visitors: The context for this article is only for the country of México.

It will not be necessary to begin speaking about the jobs today, since we already know that the job does not provide anything but material satisfaction for the personal subsistence and it has been shed of its intellectual, mental and even spiritual meanings, and it had to be converted into that thing that releases to the man from the idleness and encourage the value of his existence.

It is very difficult to find a graphic designer with a 100% certainty of the fact that he/she will be able to survive exercising forever his/her same profession and career, in one of the first tragedies of the post-industrial age: The professions decadence. Due to the fact that exists a very great need of work in our country, many professionals should exercise another different profession from the wich one they were originally preparated for. Who has not seen the arquetipical taxi driver that it is really an architect? The professions are in decadence and the graphic design suffers many devastation due to the lack from culture of the design, to the companies that do not know the performance of the graphic design and that even handle it having a designer as a simple computer operator, or even is most easier to contract to someone who is not an specialist because the companies pay less with such a person. The professions are in decadence and is undersold the value of the knowledge and of the vocation. Today the companies are married with the idea of the fact that the maximum benefit is the one which has a smaller cost.

A public or private company that is not prepared to pay for the professional's experience (who is quoted by his/her job historial), considers it is better to substitute a professional by persons with a few or void practical experience, they could pay to him/her the third part of the professional's payment. On the other hand we have the technological advance and the new industrial revolution with the arrival of the computer, that in addition to displacing million of workers, it has encouraged the generation of the "microwave professionals", that with the simple fact from be learnt some computer packages, supply to the real professional of graphic design.

The learning of a given software CAD such as Quark, Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker, CorelDRAW!, etc. causes that someone is converted at once into a graphic designer, though into the best of the cases will be an acounter or an engineer in computer systems, and in the worst case a baccalaureate graduate or secondary. But the worst arrives when emerges a private educational institutions that are devoted to the massive production of the ideal worker, someone who will be ok with that payment the company can give to him/her, someone who does not think by him/her selft because those schools do not encourage the reading on their students, it would be great to stimulate the student's intellect This is the technician (gear).

With advertising campaigns such as "Yes I want be something in the life" and "Why I should kill myself 4 years of my life, if I can in just 18 months to be graphic designer?" That would cheat easily to the vulnerable majority of the population's youths of low and middle class, it offers to new industries and society not only the elements to work best to a under cost, but what can be designated as the "culture's lack of the design".

The graphic designers in other countries are protected of these problems being within associations, in México exist something like ENCUADRE and the QUORUM advice, that accomplish an important labor in the development of the graphic design in the country. Unfortunately it is insufficient yet for counterstrike these problems that are expanded like a cancer and that can affect to the spinal marrow to the graphic designer or graphic communicator.