The End of Mentors

Designers who don't know don't grow.

A lot of changes have taken place in graphic design since the first desktop publishing software came onto the scene in 1985* and began replacing traditional mechanicals and production art in advertising agencies, newspaper and magazine offices, printing companies and freelance design studios.

The myriad changes that have evolved in the graphic design industry since 1985 have been thoroughly discussed, debated, and mulled over endlessly. Well, not endlessly, since all the discussions and arguments will eventually go silent once the previous generation of designers, the "traditional" designers, are gone. Times change, and just as we seldom encounter heated debate or even nostalgic reminiscences about the transition from horse and buggy to automobile, we will soon find discussions of changes from traditional to digital graphic design and production limited to history buffs and aficionados.

But the one discussion I seldom hear, the one that no one brings up unless it's me, the one that concerns me most, is the problem of the disappearance of mentors.

Traditionally, the business of graphic design has always included a formal or informal chain of mentors for new designers coming into the business. Mentors—not teachers—who are there working side by side with the novice designer, including art directors, creative directors, typographers, illustrators, skilled and experienced senior designers, production artists, and even copywriters and editors. Typesetters and color separators, too, have been in the stream of mentors that have helped to improved designers' skills, though not generally working side by side on a daily basis, or even in the same shop.

As more and more people have become "graphic designers" due to the accessibility of publishing software, the design industry has changed. Whereas graphic design jobs were once limited primarily to newspaper and magazine offices, advertising agencies, printing shops, and design studios, all of which had some number of mentors, today, a staggering number of companies, small to large, have an "in-house agency." In-house agencies were another traditional source of employment for designers, but few company managers had the budget or the inclination to hire media buyers, copywriters, designers, and other specialists (illustrators, typographers, photographers, letterers, etc.), and provide them with studio space and specialized tools and equipment. In-house agencies were few and far between, but still, they generally had a number of mentors on the team.

Today, publishing software has made it possible and cost-effective for any company to set up an in-house agency, often employing just one individual who is expected not only to be a graphic designer, but to also fill the roles of copywriter, photographer, typesetter, web developer, and other specialists. For isolated designers in these companies, there are no mentors. None for graphic design, and certainly none for all the other special roles the designer is nowadays expected to fill. These beginning designers know more than anyone in the company about design, yet know very little, and there is no one to move them up to the next level.

With access to limitless sources of information, such as Wikipedia, countless social media groups, and focused sites such as deviantart.com, are mentors still important? Can't everything that needs to be learned be learned from these sources? A good deal can be learned from these sources, and indeed a great deal of information has always been learned from outside sources such as advertising clubs, books, magazine articles, and biographies of the best. But, as was pointed out on Twitter, @genrelibrarian writes: "Google can bring back a hundred thousand answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one."** Likewise, the Internet can bring back a hundred thousand facts and comments, but a mentor can offer the right one. New media is simply more and faster, but this does not equate to mentors.

A mentor is someone who reacts and interacts on a real-time basis with the designer and his or her work, providing answers that evolve and change with the work and the reasons behind the work. Mentors bring years of experience to bear on the project at hand, and to the needs of the beginning designer.

Surprising numbers of new designers now work in total isolation, without the benefit of art directors, senior designers, or others to guide and direct, and to add the missing bits and pieces that make a beginning designer eventually a great designer. More and more graphic design appears to be less and less professional, let alone creative and game-changing.

Mentors are not available in books, or videos, or online. They are individuals that stand right beside the designer, interacting as the work develops.

With all due respect to those people online who have a great deal to offer, one generally gets a lot of pretty bad information from the loudest and most ignorant and arrogant voices online. Andrew Keen in his book, "The Cult of the Amateur" writes, "Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated."

An excellent example of this is evident in the typography argument regarding the use of one or two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence which appeared on the "Slate" web site:

http://www.slate.com/id/2281146/pagenum/1

One can't help but notice that there are 1,827 comments (and growing) on this very small matter, and many commenters blathering about it just to attack the author and see their handle in print. Many of the comments come from people who don't know the difference between typesetting, typewriting, and (seriously) the English language. At least one person blithely states that his personal preference is every bit as valid as 500 years of industry development by professional typographers (even claiming that the whole 500 years of professionals never cared about the reader). An amazing argument, yet not uncommon to the usual crop of ignorant and arrogant who cannot see anyone beyond themselves in the audience they purport to be addressing, and believe that they are suddenly experts in any topic they care to discuss.

Imagine this type of discussion—argument—for every tiny bit of trivia that designers must deal with from center of interest to color separations and from abstraction to subjectivity.

However, it is not merely a long list of dos and don'ts that new designers need in order to grow. Graphic design is subjective. That is to say, it's art. Art director/designer George Lois once famously roared that "Advertising is not a fucking science!" Nevertheless, teachers quite often are not permitted to give subjective grades to design students; it would "not be fair." Unfortunately, because design is art, subjective analysis and criticism is essential to improving the designer's ability to do great work. When a mentor says, "Make the line heavier," or, "There is too much red," this subjective response (others might disagree), is the sort of thing that can lift a design from ordinary to classic.

Not everything needs to adhere to classical rules and limits; of course we want to see evolution and progress, creativity and change. But mindless mistakes, irrational arguments, and just plain rampant ignorance is not the same thing as progress and creativity. Mentors help to prevent ignorance becoming the de facto standard in any industry.

After four years of objective grades (student met deadline, student used correct color space, student had no typos, etc.), new graphic designers often hit the job scene with a portfolio of "A" work yet not even the slightest idea of how to create professional work, let alone great work. Mentors provide the priceless real-time knowledge, expertise, and subjective criticism that new designers need. Unless there are no mentors.

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* The original programs were MacPublisher and Aldus PageMaker, both of which were designed to run on the Apple Macintosh. In 1987, Aldus released a version of PageMaker for PCs running Windows 1.0.
** January 18, 2011