It’s true these days that you have to be multi-skilled, but it’s not as straight forward as you might think. For someone who’s been working in the industry since the birth of QuarkXpress and the dawn of Indesign, keeping up with all the programs is a lot of pressure. Not to mention the money. Sure, updating individual programs is not costly (relatively speaking), but updating ALL your programs and hardware constantly to stay up to date with the industry IS expensive. For those of us freelancers who have families, a mortgage, a budget – who are not 20-something designers with plenty of disposable income and who do not have the shelter of a design studio or ad agency who continuously update all this stuff to stay on the cutting edge, it is a costly exercise. Also, I personally see it as too many clients/studios wanting something for nothing. Everyone wants someone who can ‘do everything’ and yet the pay is not ‘commensurate with experience’ at all. I can tell you from experience that the more you can do, the more of a ‘bonus’ that is for your employer who wants a ‘Senior Designer’ for a ‘Junior designer’ salary. It’s just expected that you learn all these extra skills just to keep your job.

And since when is it a bad thing to be a specialist? Being a Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Being able to do everything doesn’t make you good at everything. Just because you can design, doesn’t mean you can write code to build a site: which a lot of employers think is the same thing. Sure, it’s good to have a variety of skills, I’m not disagreeing with that – I try and keep an ‘adaptive mind’ of course and learn whenever I can – but I think that’s a sad comment on the appreciation of specialist skills in an industry that already sadly undervalues it’s ‘skilled workers’ anyway. I would rather have someone who knows how to handle annual report financials than someone who can ‘do it all’ and takes twice as long because of a lack of experience at laying out tables. As a print specialist myself, I’m sad to hear that specialists are not welcome anymore.

As for teaching students about ‘real-world’ experience… I can tell you as someone who teaches as well as working that students constantly complain about ‘the amount of work’ and ‘the deadlines’ when they find out what the real world can be like. The look of scorn or disbelief on their faces when you tell them about real world expectations as far as work flow, clients, briefings etc. etc. is quite disheartening. Maybe it’s because so many students are deciding to take up design because they don’t know what to do with their lives and they always ‘kinda enjoyed art’ at school. Maybe it’s a generation thing where they think you can walk into a $60,000 p.a. salary after you graduate without having actually done any hard work at college/uni/in the workforce. Did you know that students no longer need to submit folios or even to have drawn since high school to get into art colleges?

I think we have to educate clients/employers and say ‘if you want someone for a position, think about what they will really need to be able to do and not just say “oh, we’ll just get someone who can do everything….just in case” ‘. Perhaps it’s just ignorance and they don’t know just what it takes to have all those skills or maybe they’re just cheap? Who knows? I suspect it’s a little bit of a ‘don’t know, don’t care’ attitude. Even GP’s refer you to a specialist, for god’s sake! Why should our industry be any different? I would learn any program I could if I could afford it, and if – IF – any employer would pay me what I’m worth, then it would be worth it. It’s quite infuriating when you look at what employers want for what they’re prepared to pay. Knowledge may be power, but it’s never the people who have the knowledge that have the power in this industry. It would be interesting to find out how many bosses use more than just 3 programs a day. Or CAN even use more than 3 programs at all (not including email or the internet). Perhaps in this current world where everyone is expected to know everything, specialists will make a comeback. Knowing a few programs inside out might actually make you stand out from the crowd one day instead of, apparently, making you obsolete and a pariah.

I once did a Microsoft Word 1 day course and my trainer said at the end of that day that I know more now after that one day course as someone who’d never really used Microsoft Word than most people who use Word every single day of their life. Unbelievable.

Bitter, maybe. I’m just sick and tired of all of us ‘creatives’ never getting paid what we’re worth and now, more than ever we are getting totally shafted because the bottom line is more important than a)creating good work and b) respecting the people who make it and paying them what they’re worth. Ask any designer what they’re biggest gripe with the industry is and most will say respect.