Paula Scher in an interview with Pr*tty Sh*tty
I’ve noticed the same (some of my work included). I compare the work I see now versus the work I saw 5 years ago as a student, and there’s a chasm. I see the formulas. There’s less spirit, less heart. I know I’ve changed and developed, and I’m coming to the work from a different mind set now, but that doesn’t change that lots of things still feel unconsidered, with an over-reliance on existing design systems and patterns. “Rely on other media’s insights and just reference them. Need not worry about your own insight. Make a poster, so you don’t need to have more than one idea or a multi-dimensional thought. Phone it in.”
A few months ago I read a quote about how it’s worse to be a sports reporter now than it was 20 years ago because the players are so uniformly focused on the sport. I forgot the source, but he said, used to be you could walk into a locker room and you could have a decent conversation referencing history and literature and current events. No more. I wonder if the same has happened to some designers. Have we gotten narrower? Poorer? Stupider? Scared to inch outside the boundaries of our own sport?
I’m sure our industry ebbs and flows like any other. But, I want to make things better. Produce better work. Relevant things. Long-lasting things. Wholistic, human things. As Warren Buffet says, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”
We’re scared. So, here I come. You with me?
(via viafrank)
