New, Untrained Designers and Developers Will Not Kill Industry
Arguably one of the most unsettling movements in technology today is also one of the most promising. The way an individual feels about the Open Source Initiative (OSI) is generally determined by whether or not they own or work for a company that owns proprietary software that is now being challenged by a never-ending tsunami of free, ever-evolving applications released under the OSI’s guidelines.
Designers and developers who make use of open source applications have seen an amazing increase in productivity because of the expandability of the product and the incredibly active and knowledgeable user base, the populates forums from one side of the Internet to the other with useful tips, mods, templates and helpful Q & A’s that allow even the greenest OSI neophyte to quickly construct something functional in a fraction of the time it would have taken them without it.
A very important aspect of the Open Source Initiative is that is democratizes the tools of creation, breaking down former barriers of entry into certain professions. Consider GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), an open source version of Adobe’s omnipresent Photoshop software, which is made available free to anyone who wants to download it. Though GIMP isn’t as powerful as Photoshop from a professional standpoint (lacking support for advanced workflows and tools), it is still more than most amateur graphic designers or photo editors will ever need, cutting out the initial $700 minimum startup-fee that would normally be necessary to be a part of the graphic design field.
GIMP lacks the supplementary software the Adobe has in their utility belt, like Illustrator (for vectors graphics), InDesign (for layout), and Dreamweaver (for graphic-based web design), but through the magic of the OSI, there are free alternatives available for each and every one of these applications (Inkscape, Scribus and Nvu, respectively).
Consider also the cost of content management systems, which in the past have cost hundreds of dollars for each website they were used on (not to mention the monthly- or yearly-fees that had to be paid, as well). Now, with the advent of easy-to-use, easy-to-customize CMS’s like WordPress and Joomla, a few minutes spent reading some instructions can result in a fully-functioning, CMS-driven website. Additionally, there are thousands of free templates and themes available for these CMS’s all over the web, making customization that much easier, and decreasing the height of the learning curve that much more.
So the question that many of you are probably asking at this point is ‘Why is this so great? I’m a designer/developer, and now there are thousands more people treading on my territory; people who don’t know a pica from a pita, and who wouldn’t know how to write Strict code if they read about it in their AOL user’s handbook. This can only lower the quality of the work in our field, and increase the amount of competition (which lowers our prices). You’re nuts.”
Well, that was actually as much of a statement as a question, but I’ll answer it anyway: increasing the number of participants in a field can only be good for everyone involved. True, for many people, the value of graphic design and development has decreased. Logos and entire websites can be purchased for anywhere from $20-200 through ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘spec design’ services like Guru.com, crowdSpring and 99designs. This is a pricing point that a serious, trained designer cannot compete with, and shouldn’t.
Despite the fact that this movement may seem like a disease that will kill off the design industry, in reality the democratization of design and development tools is a positive thing. True, to many companies design will forevermore be worth a few hundred dollars and no more, regardless of what trained professionals may try to tell them, but on the other hand, an equal and opposite movement is taking place toward the top. Suddenly there is a new way for companies that really care about their branding, their look and feel, clean and efficient code and the overall practicality of their collateral to distinguish themselves. Before, even the companies that were paying little for design work were getting something above average: the market required that a designer or developer have a certain level of talent and knowledge before entering the field (otherwise they would know have known how to get the tools, or been willing to invest in them). Now, the amount of bad design far outweighs the good design, as amateur designers and developers pawn off their shabby logos and clumsily constructed, table-laden landing pages, making the work that the real professionals create stand out even more, giving them additional value.
I’m not saying that everyone who is a trained professional will be making more money or taking on more interesting projects. In fact, many will find themselves in a tricky situation, realizing that they’ll need to pick up a few new skill sets or adapt their style to fit this new economic situation. But individual cases aside, this movement can only be good for the industry as a whole. The barbarians are at the gate, and each and every one of us will have to decide if we will fall like Rome, certain of our superiority until our last project burns, or if we will develop ourselves further, building a mutually beneficial relationship with the invaders and allowing their efforts to elevate our own.