It’s official. With Photoshop CS5, Adobe has single-handedly made my degree (and many more out there) worth absolutely nothing. Ok, so maybe not NOTHING but at least worth the cost of Photoshop CS5. You no longer need to have any skill to remove objects from an image, know what the tools actually do and how to alter them, or even the actual reason you are doing anything in the program. You only need to select an area, use a single check-box…”Content Aware”, and hit delete. It’s like magic.
Apart from the image manipulator, you no longer need a good photographer either who has the ability to see the issues that may arrise in the shot before they even take it. Oh well, I guess the new wave of Art Majors studying fields that use Photoshop will have an easier time with their projects. Maybe that’s just it, I’m bitter I didn’t have this option available to me. Enjoy your easier image manipulations kids, now maybe you’ll have to think more conceptually.
Not one for poetry and performance art it’s actually quite surprising that I found the work of Rives as riveting and thought provoking as I did. That being said, I’m posting three videos on my site about him. There isn’t a whole lot to say other than this is the first performance artist/poet to really catch my eye, even through all those years as an art major at Northern Michigan University I was never able to really grasp the art of spoken word outside of music. The following has changed that.
Rives remixes TED 2006
The first comes from TED Conference 2006 in February of 2006. It’s an amazing imagery of what the TEDers will do once they leave the conference, and what we should all do when we have the spark of a new or life changing idea…share it.
Recently many newspapers have been closing their doors and ceasing all print media due to pure costs of print overhead. It simply costs too much to print and distribute physical editions these days. Aside from cost, there are some that claim the print media is a burden on the environment as well.
There was a rumor online that Wired Magazine is looking to cut the web content in lieu of keeping the print media alive after a large amount of layoffs. Not only is this counter intuitive, but it’s counter culture right now. While web content reigns supreme due to it’s cheap overhead cost, this publisher is going to keep their costly print edition going. This got me to thinking, what happens to a graphic designer or layout designer when print media is reduced or dies?
Most people will argue that a graphic designer can still work in a web-based world, and while this is somewhat true there are parts of print media that you cannot replicate digitally. Graphic designers always have one very important thing that web-designers do not…medium control.
You can write all the code you want and test your design or site in every browser, but nothing is going to guarantee that your viewer is on a computer that supports the site, that has enough screen real-estate, or that their screen is calibrated for color. Graphic Designers in magazine, news paper, or other print mediums are typically given specific dimensions into which their design is effectively placed to create an emotion or feeling. Web Designers can never feel this sort of control for the success of their work. So what happens to all of these designers? Here are the questions I pose to you, my designer readers and friends:
Are we all to just fold and start working digital only?
Is the print media even salvageable in this economic downturn?
With ‘sustainability’ being such a buzz word, is print doomed for being too wasteful?
Do you still subscribe to a print edition of anything?
Let me know what you think in the comments. I’m very curious to see what discussions arise.