Sort of a work related post today...not really a rant (well it isn't yet anyway) just more of a general observation.

The Graphics Industry is becoming too easy...FAR too easy...confused?...then allow me to elaborate...print (and graphics) used to be the arena of professionals, in the old days everything used to be put together using glue, rotring pens, scalpels and skill...it was all very complicated, and therefore a specialised field that precious few understood completely...you'd *certainly* never get some housewife with too much time on her hands calling herself a designer as she wouldn't have a fucking clue where to begin (see where i'm going with this :)).

When I was going through college we were taught 'paste-up' and all the other old fashioned techniques as well as all this new-fangled computer doohickery so I *did* actually have some insight into the way things used to be done (how many students now know where the term 'leading' got it's name from?)...i've never used any of it of course as, by the time I got my first job, people just weren't doing things that way any more...but even then it was still a specialist field, Macs used to be expensive...VERY expensive, the first Mac I used (A Quadra 950...it's used as a bookend now I believe) cost £9,000...but they were expensive for a reason, they were built properly and they weren't, strictly speaking, consumer products...they were for the print and design industry...and in an industry where people will pay £1,000,000 and over for a Heidelberg press £9,000 is small potatoes! It wasn't just the hardware prices that kept Joe Public away either, the necessary software was also pretty pricey...Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator used to cost thousands...and aside from the price factor you really had to know what you were doing to get anything from them...I remember when a nice effect in Photoshop used to take *hours* of very complicated fiddling around, and when you were finished you could be proud of something that looked really good and that you knew was fucking difficult to do.

And that's my problem...everything's too easy now...a 'nice' effect in Photoshop can be created by clicking a button (hence the world being awash with text that's got a 'bevel and emboss' filter applied to it...I fucking HATE that filter, every nonce with a hacked version of Photoshop uses it on anything...irrespective of style, readability, design, size...they just 'bevel and emboss' *everything* and think they're really clever...twats!), obviously the true professional will *always* be able to do a lot more with these programs but my problem is that everything's now too easy for people who've got absolutely no fucking idea what they're doing to sell themselves as a designer...and, as someone who *does* know the ins and outs of print/multimedia/video work, it's intensely irritating to have some jumped up little shitbag (who can't even comprehend the 'difficult' idea of putting 5mm of bleed around the edge of his horrendous piece of artwork) slowly 'explaining' things to me and banging on about how successful a designer he is...or the wankers who sell themselves as web-designers and sell people sites based around fucking templates in Front Page...AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!

I understand that design is basically just commercial art, and that all art is based around personal preferences...but shit's still just shit, and I don't care how much people bang on about 'not being taught the rules just makes them more open to try things real designers wouldn't think of'...that's true in perhaps one or two cases, where people actually have an innate ability for art, an eye for how interesting pieces of work can be constructed...but they are rare...and what you normally have is irritating cunty little ketchup ferrets producing complete and utter shit...and producing it badly...and getting uppity about it when it DOESN'T FUCKING WORK...how many times people, 72dpi is NOT print resolution, RGB is NOT print format, 12 frames per second is NOT acceptable for video, pasting a picture into Illustrator and saving it as an eps is NOT what we mean by 'supply the logo as an Illustrator eps', it's NOT ok to use loads of hi-res pics in a Flash animation...I could go on...but I think i'd explode...hhhmmmm, it did turn into a rant didn't it...oh well :)