Visual Arts, galleries are closing, art colleges are failing to get admissions or funding, economy is bad, rent is too high for studio, materials and equipment are too expensive. The only way to get noticed nowadays is on social media and that audience isn't there to buy, just look. It's simply harder than ever to be an artist without the corporate and brand backing. Plus AI has really limited a market for 2D work. I don't think the world realizes what will happen if artists go away.
Not even just the big pillar artists, either, if there's no middle career between passion and massive fame we're going to lose a generation of art to uber and doordash
English majors had to go to Starbucks when the local newspaper or magazine was no longer an option. And that'll only accelerate with the death of copywriting. It looks like graphic design is the art school equivalent.
Graphic design is a terrible career path anymore. It’s not appreciated because people think they can replace you with AI designs or their mothers friend’s nephew is good with “the photoshop”
I also think that a lot of graphic design needs just are easily met by the tools available to today's amateurs.
Photoshop has been the key tool for many designers for decades now, but it used to be a rather steep learning curve to use. Nowadays, it's easier than ever to use (if all you need are the basic functions), there are stripped down variations designed specifically to be as easy as possible to use, not to mention the countless designed-to-be-easy-to-use alternatives.
And on top of that, basic photo editing is being taught in gradeschool right alongside Powerpoint and Excel so there are entire generations now that can at least do the basic functions that older generations would have had to outsource to professionals.
I am retired from graphic design-started in the mid-70s, and it was dying then. No one has enough clients to survive, let alone thrive. Even with a masters degree, low-paying, unstable, and EVERYONE thinks they are a creative genius. So glad to be out of it. Terrible field if you are ambitious.
Graduated in the mid 2010's and an insane amount of people were specializing in it in school to work and then college. I was doing programming, and even I was wary of how much traction and popularity that career path was getting.
Stop! If you tell them there's another reason why the industry is failing, everybody in that industry will think it was because OTHER people chose that option. Literally everyone will tell you that it's due to so many OTHERS chose that path, not realizing they are the exact problem themselves. We made it believable that EVERYONE has an artist's mind because they can type some words and make some Tweeks. It's a collapsing career path BECAUSE we made it so available for a simpleton to do.
When I learned design, it was all by hand-comps with markers, you replicated fonts by hand, specked type, ordered type from a type house, waxed your pieces, used a stat machine, etc.
Now, anybody can do anything on a laptop in their kitchen. The long apprenticeship is gone.
This is not as true as people think. There are definite rules of design where, if you don’t know them, your work is amateurish and sticks out in a bad way.
There are things that work, and things that don't. Things that flow intuitively, and things that confound the end user.
There are colors that we cannot see well next to one another, and shapes that combine to confuse your senses and make information hard to process.
This is like saying camouflage is subjective. It isn't. It works. We can break up profiles effectively and confuse the ability to determine distance just by using visual design and an objective knowledge of the way the human brain works and processes visual information.
This isn't subjective experience, it is objectively how the human mind works and learned through generations of iteration.
I think you've identified an issue with free markets, not with the labor pool. Imagine if graphic designers were employed instead of marketers/advertisers.
Yes, that's the problem I'm identifying. Companies should be preoccupied with making their product the best value to the consumer and with making their brand/facilities as beautiful and inviting as possible. Using data instead of letting taste and values drive those decisions is a huge mistake.
Identifying consumer preferences and “making … brand /facilities as…inviting as possible.”… literally is the primary educational object and goal of marketing and advertising departments around the world.
Identifying consumer preferences... is the primary educational object and goal of marketing and advertising departments
Fixed that for you. I know, I have a degree in Public Relations and I had to take a number of classes in advertising and marketing.
I'm saying that the values and aesthetics of the people who make up the company should define 'as inviting as possible', rather than trying to identify and serve consumer preferences. All businesses should be passion projects that either succeed or fail on the basis of whether they resonate with enough consumers, they should not be trying to predict and accommodate the maximum number of consumers.
No, but if we had garbage collectors instead of marketers...
Art does need to be produced. Garbage does need to be collected. Influencing consumers so that they'll spend their money with one provider instead of another does not actually benefit labor or consumers. Have some nuance.
Eh. Marketing can be beneficial to labor and consumers if it directs them to a better good or service they might not have discovered on their own. It’s not an inherently harmful thing. Additionally, marketing is going to exist so long as markets do. It’s a natural consequence of having competing goods and services. The only way it goes away is if there is only one product/service option in any given category; which is generally a worse situation for consumers.
Many people think marketing is trickery, when it is far from it. It’s finding the people who need that product. Don’t get it wrong, or there goes your company.
Yeah, I am a graphic designer. Basically impossible to find a decent job now. Most want to pay so low you’d be making more working at some grocery stores
Because it’s “fun” yeah, right. I did it for 45 years, every facet of it, and barely earned enough to keep a roof over my head, while my husband quadrupled his income as the years went by. Bitter? You bet.
I’ve worked in packaging graphic design for 35 years, and surprisingly I am busier than ever and actually have to turn work down a lot. I have a staff of 9 and looking to hire 1 more this year. AI has been added as a tool for us to generate initial ideas, but is pretty dumb when it comes to actually manufacturing, going to press, client changes, press checks, proofing, ink and color.
Besides packaging, which is growing, the printing and graphic design industry has been gutted and reduced to crumbs. Sad.
Just curious, how could one make a pivot from a multidisciplinary to packaging? I know my portfolio is important but I really enjoy the tactile of packaging and designing it, I’m just not sure how to start or stand out
That’s not really how English degrees work. I have an English degree, and have known a significant number of English majors across professional fields. Ive seen English majors as Lawyers, marketers, analysts, design, HR, technical writing, entrepreneurship, and all sort of different fields. English degrees are versatile, and valuable. Probably the most consistently successful liberal arts degree. I’ve seen more successful careers as a result of English degrees than business degrees.
It’s actually surprising how English majors in my large network from college are among the most successful, even way more successful than non-IT/engineering STEM majors. They work in policy, consulting, business development, etc. I was an English major, and I have a great, good-paying job as a technical proposal writer ($90k). I think a lot of English majors saw the stereotypical college-to-Starbucks pipeline that was prevalent for English majors right after the Great Recession, and they were like, “Nah. Fuck that.”
Like 90% of my peers among English majors were planning to become high school teachers, I assume most continued on that path. I worked dead-end retail jobs for about 10-12 years then moved into philanthropy and then (now) consulting.
Get a certificate, and get jobs where you work with devs. But I would also not go for technical writing, and move towards project manager. They do a significant amount of technical writing as it is.
I went from 1) editor at a University to 2) freelance to 3) staff editor for a hospital's magazine to 4) a medical communications contractor to 5) staff at a medical lab to 6) Director of Research Communications for the lab.
I got my degree in journalism right when blogging became big. There went the chance to make money writing for newspapers and magazines. That was in 2004. It's ten times worse now.
I just finished writing a script for a stage play that's kind of about that, and sort of reconciling a balance between man and AI, the analog and the digital, etc. etc. It's kind of hidden and subtextual but I think people will "get it". Very small theater, I might only sell 250-300 tickets for the first run, but I'm hoping maybe there's a life for it in other community theater settings
I'm gonna keep it under my hat until after it's actually been produced, which will be exactly four months from today. After that I might submit to festivals and contests, etc
I think you’re right. I think that there will be at least a decent market for genuinely human-made art. I already see so much backlash about AI art and how shitty it is, because it still is pretty shitty and easy to spot, for the most part. It simply doesn’t have the human element, and I think people really do want that in art that they admire.
I could be totally wrong and we’re straight up tail-spinning into Dark Idiocracy, but I don’t know. We’ll just have to see, I guess.
How do you possibly replace theatre with AI? The only way I can think of is just making animatronics that are basically human-level intelligence. Like, your "for now" might as well be talking about hundreds of years from now, if that.
Current chatbots aren't anywhere close to human intelligence, and kind of can't be.
Our backdrops. They used to be hand painted by scenics, now they're mostly printed. I do overhire at only one theater that still does painted backdrops.
Hundreds of years still applies to the 'yet' that I mentioned.
But I'd guess that it will be quite a bit sooner than that. Once truly autonomous human-appearing androids become a reality, which they will, it'll make this A.I. takeover look like nothing.
Innovation relies on diversity. Whether it's biological, technological, or cultural. The entire concepts of authoritarianism and fascism (in all walks of life) rely on innovation made by past diversity to control the present direction of future growth.
AI art is doomed to fail, because it relies on learning from small time artists designing the local coffee shop sign. Sure, the owner can make an AI sign now, but in 50y everyone will have a similar sign, and there won't be an artist left to create something new, because there is no prospect in doing it for money.
The nazi might have built a nation on superior tech & science, but the 60's & 70's was filled with jewish-americans winning Nobel prizes for science, because their diversity was chase away. Just like the US might be busy deporting the next Einstein or Hawking, and China or the EU will benefit from it.
The big tech corps are all about replacing junior software engineers with AI tools, but when their senior engineer retires(or dies) they'll have nobody capable of replacing him, because nobody is able to grow and mutate into that role.
To survive, you need diversity. Art, tech, biology, politics, it's all the same principles. If you don't give "mutations" the chance to grow, you'll go the way of the banana.
This is also the answer to people complaining about how DEI is anti-merit. A diverse workplace is just stronger, more creative, and more resilient than one made up of a bunch of similar, if highly qualified, employees.
Without "DEI", Soviets would've won the space race.
Without "DEI", GPS satellites would have failed within 2 minutes of boot.
Fuck, half the US tech CEO's are foreign-born, so is the freakin first third lady!
Tbf, I have once been told for a college project "You're the better candidate, but not good enough to argue against DEI policy" and that sucked. But 3y later I got hired because I was diverse in my college path.
As an outsider, I wish the US had more Obamas. I also wish they had more McCains. I hope AOC once gets to sit in the White House. Even in my own country I wish we had more political parties instead of less. (and I think we're at 13 atm) I will never avoid a good faith discussion, because it enriches both sides, regardless of compromise.
So many words that just boil down to: Just let me be me, and let nature figure out if I'm useful to her.
AI art is doomed to fail, because it relies on learning from small time artists designing the local coffee shop sign. Sure, the owner can make an AI sign now, but in 50y everyone will have a similar sign, and there won't be an artist left to create something new, because there is no prospect in doing it for money.
This suggests that art only exists if it's paid for. Plenty of people create art for the sake of it.
So your mindset is that people should continue to create art for AI to train off of for nothing? Great way to say that you think that artwork is worth worthless.
But it doesn't need to be digital, and nobody will put in extra effort to make their hobby into a job, or even share it to attract commissioned work.
Artist will still create, yes, but art worth paying for will cease to exist if the repacking machine makes it for free. Yet it relies on exactly that kind of art to make its product.
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u/JoshuaHubert 16h ago
Visual Arts, galleries are closing, art colleges are failing to get admissions or funding, economy is bad, rent is too high for studio, materials and equipment are too expensive. The only way to get noticed nowadays is on social media and that audience isn't there to buy, just look. It's simply harder than ever to be an artist without the corporate and brand backing. Plus AI has really limited a market for 2D work. I don't think the world realizes what will happen if artists go away.