The Overwhelming Expectation of Modern Graphic Designers

In the present time, Nigerian digital marketing company Paredaim Plus monitors how graphic designers cope with unrealistic requirements. Recently, we ran an employment advertisement that advertised new standards for one designer. These were the requirements that candidates needed for employment.

- Video Editors

- Motion Graphics Artists

- UI/UX Designers

- 3D Modelers

- Print & Packaging Designers

- Illustrators

- Branding Experts

- Social Media Strategists

- AR/VR Designers

- AI Art Generator Experts

The job vacancy asked even the designers to show proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite, Figma, and Blender, along with knowledge in HTML and CSS programming languages.

How does that lead to a professional getting what they are investing, as being a professional on these things? Those compensation levels are so low that fresher independent freelancers make more money than working as an employee. The industry trend results in harming both the professional practitioners and the professional development environment.

 

The Devaluation of Graphic Design as a Profession

It was immediately evident that graphic design had assumed an essential role in carrying out branding functions, advertising practices and marketing activities. Nowadays, graphic design is considered a generalist job that needs a single individual fulfilling specialized jobs. Hiring organizations leave job vacancies open for several months because it is assumed that one person will cover all of the expertise that they should never be expected to master.

This unfair demand results in:

- Overworked and underpaid designers

- High burnout rates

- Lower quality of work due to divided focus

- Talented professionals leaving the field for better opportunities

 

Graphic Design is Not a One-Size-Fits-All Profession

Success in separate ranges of abilities is needed in different design fields. A company that posts a 'Graphic Designer' job which details skills to be possessed by a sole designer will find itself ending in recruitment failure. Here’s why:

- Motion graphics is a par of the specialization that is handled separately for Motion designer and not in the case of UI/UX, because motion graphics is about animation and storytelling, where IP or UI/UX is about designing experiences.

- Since the depth of expertise required for every specialization is not understood by organizations, they try cost-saving measures by combining various roles into one position, resulting in weakening the effectiveness of their creative output.

- The two fields of expertise, print design and 3D modeling, don’t lend to each other because a print design professional generally has to learn to work around color profile, typography, and print production knowledge, which 3D modeling doesn’t care about at all.

- Visual communication and design aesthetics offer different creating capabilities compared to programming abilities; hence, the designers who work with graphics have a limited capability in writing the code of software.

 

The Impact of These Unrealistic Expectations

When businesses look for “Superhuman Designers”, the industry bears some detrimental effects. The reduced design quality, however, is the consequence of stress together with the professional frustration that comes from the lack of job satisfaction. As new designer enters the field, it necessitates that job candidates are more and more experts in unreasonable fields to qualify for the positions.

Moreover, these expectations stifle creativity. Designers are not able to devote time to specialized artistic and technical development of their trade due to the need for multi-disciplinary skill juggling.

 

What Needs to Change?

To build better designer work environments and long-term professional paths, businesses have to take two important steps.

1. Some images are far easier to work with being pixel perfect rather than a generic coach who has never worked in that team, so a company should hire a designer or an artist specifically for the role since UI/UX designers would like to get anything as far from the editing task as possible, as much as an illustrator would not want to do anything with 3D modeling responsibilities. Organizations must do this properly because job satisfaction and high-quality work output result.

2. When a position needs several abilities a salary should match the expertise required. It’s both an unethical and unsustainable employment practice to require two to three jobs that one designer must do at the same fee.

3. HR personnel who lack enough industry knowledge create multiple job postings. In hiring activities, creative professionals want to play in the actual hiring process to validate practical job requirements.

4. The designers need to come up with creative teams as they work together rather than to work on their own for every company.

5. When designer organizations provide training opportunities for designers, they naturally create the paths to career development and prevent any ramming in designers to learn many skills which they might not need.

 

A Call to Action for the Design Industry

Paredaim Plus team advocates for the value of the designer and the value that the designer deserves (and should receive) in the field he or she is working in and also the price of graphic design service, of course. Professionals thrive in a work environment that fosters creativity when the resources of professionals exceed the requirements to stay within the confines of excessive demands. Divorce from uniform design practices means that organizations investing in the skilled specialists, capable of delivering very good business outcomes in an equitable design environment.

Only an understanding that true expertise does not exist over ten different areas of a practice will make us prosper as graphic designers. Companies must know the worth extension of professional designers who are experts in their fields, and they can be paid accordingly. When this happens, the change is true industry growth.