bob said:You ramble on stating as true things not in evidence. You might want to actually venture forth into the external reality and become passingly familiar with How Things Are rather than making proclamations indicating how you wish things were. You might look less the fool.
If you want to insult me as being a fool I'll insult you right back by calling you blind. If you can't see all the amateur rate visual garbage being installed next to city streets then you must be blind. If you want to defend that garbage and the amateurs producing it then you have no standards.
When I see a sign set in Arial Bold with the type artificially squeezed to fit a given space I know instantly that designer either didn't know what he was doing or just didn't care. It's just too difficult for the hack to scroll a little farther down the font list for another default font like Impact that might fit the space a little better.
bob said:There is no evidence that the rate of incompetence is pretty much the same among the proper equipped and formally educated as those making do with native ability and what ever artifacts they might have available to them. Conversely there are at least as many competent operators in the latter group as in the former.
Very easy to say, but you have no evidence to back up this claim. I'm drawing on 18 years of experience in this industry and what I have seen from competitors over that time.
bob said:You keep stressing tools and education. This would make you suspect as being one of the incompetents you rail against. Unlike other fields of endeavor, those requiring at least a modicum of creativity require some innate ability with which to begin.
Yes, anyone doing visually creative work must have talent. But talent alone is not enough to make someone productive. When I was in high school I could already draw and paint better than anyone else in school. Formal education helped me focus that talent and improve.
bob said:Either you can do this work or you can't. And if you can't do it, all of the really cool tools and formal education extant will not change that. Likewise, if you can do it, then those same tools and formal education might sharpen your abilities, but you can do journeyman work without them.
You are missing an important element to this: being able to make a good living doing the work.
Rank amateurs come into the graphics trade with little idea of what to charge. When they work freelance they drive down the prices of what more seasoned freelancers can charge. Fly by night sign shops sprout up and drive down the profit margins for sign companies that have been in business for decades. Too many customers can't tell the difference between good and bad design or good and bad signs so they just pick whatever company is doing the work for less. Good old race to the bottom economics.
signmeup said:The notion that one cannot learn a trade like graphic design unless one attends university is absurd. Do you think Da Vinci had a degree in graphic design?
Did I say attending a four year university was required? No. But the learning has to come from somewhere. A self taught amateur is not going to magically discover everything about typography, page layout, composition, color theory, etc. by just tinkering around on his own in CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator.