Confessions of Humiliated Graphic Designers: Why I Bother So Much with Graphic Design
According to a study conducted by BEKRAF (Badan Ekonomi Kreatif Indonesia), graphic design is among the highest subsectors with the most significant growth of workers and companies with the percentage of 10.28% [1]. Additionally, the rising number of graphic design students among 70 institutions in the past 5 years is a mere proof that the industry has gained significant interests from people.
Despite the prolific rise of the quantity of graphic designers in Indonesia, there has been an absence of appreciation toward graphic designers in Indonesia from people outside of the industry. According to a report by SINDIKASI (Serikat Pekerja Media dan Industri Kreatif Indonesia), many graphic designers in Jakarta admitted to be underpaid despite having adequate qualifications and there has been a growing number of creative professionals who are seeking help for dealing with workplace stress. [2]
Based on the facts stated above, I tried to examine the issue by asking myself a question: In what particular way I could improve the significance of graphic design industry in Indonesia?
The Intervention
To investigate and configure the main issue that I'll be focusing on for the rest of my MA project, I conducted a small 24 hours online dialogue-styled intervention with my Instagram connections. This intervention aimed for Jakarta-based graphic designers (mostly junior graphic designers) to tell their negative experiences and stories while doing their job as graphic designers. In the span of a day, 15 graphic designers contributed into this dialogue, with up to 3 different stories for each of them.
Here are some of the stories that I compiled from the dialogue.
Underestimating
“I was in my campus when I walked pass some of my classmates carrying their painting utilities going inside the lift with 2 other girls from I-don’t-know-what major. When my classmates left they said ‘that must be an easy major just to draw all day’.”
Misunderstanding
“When my ex’s mum knew I was in graphic design major, she said ‘it’s okay for girls to not study that hard. Men shouldn’t take such major that will only make you draw all day.’'"
Misunderstanding
“I am working right now as an in-house graphic designer that handles branding for 3 restaurants. I got this job to make illustrations to be put on bowls. Out of the blue, the manager told me this: ‘so making illustration for bowls is what graphic designers do?’ and I was like: ‘so after all these times I made all of these posters, tent-cards, banners, who am I being reckoned as?’.”
Misunderstanding
“I was at a café working on my project when a guy came to me and said this: ‘are you a graphic designer? so you’re doing that poster on the street? or that thing at the restaurant?’ so he basically comparing a graphic designer with a printing technician?”
Underestimating
“If a friend or family want us to design something, they’ll always ask for ‘friends/family price’. That’s so sad.”
Misunderstanding
“This is kinda funny. When I was at the hospital to check my mum, someone in the same room told me this when he found out I was in Visual communication design (DKV in Indonesian, and it’s pronounced something like “Di Café), he said: ‘so you’re working at the café?’.”
Underestimating
“This mainly happens in rural area in Indonesia rather than in Jakarta. When they asked me to design something, they always so price-oriented. They asked me to design logos for IDR 200,000 (equivalent to £10).”
Misunderstanding
“I tested my mum and dad by asking them about what my work is. My dad answered: ‘Designing for the office.’ and my mum answered: ‘draw all the time until you get dark panda eyes.’ Haha.”
Underestimating
“Someone asked me to design a menu book and a poster at 1 AM and asked me to finish it by 7 AM.”
Underestimating
“My sisters can be super mad at me when I don’t want to design for them for free they can actually mock me and even belittling my job as a graphic designer. ‘It’s just a logo’, ‘It’s easy. You can do that in just a few minutes’, ‘Even my non-graphic designer friends can do this’. I’m getting tired of this. They always take things personally when I decline what they want me to do.”
Underestimating
“My story: I got a client from a national beauty company. I worked on the illustration and packaging for their newest product. At the end, I didn’t got paid for that project.”
Defining the Main Issue
While it might not be a relevant data collecting technique based on its duration and number of correspondents, the online dialogue that I conducted gave me clarity on which kind of direction I want to take to improve the significance of graphic design industry in Indonesia. I can clearly conclude two points of hypothesis on what really is happening in the graphic design industry in Indonesia:
Graphic design is regarded as an insignificant industry in Indonesia because people outside the industry don't have any idea or clue about it.
If they are aware about the role of graphic designers, they just simply misunderstood or just overlooking the significance of graphic design in society.
From these hypothesis, I came up with another question to ask to myself: How can we eliminate, or at the very least diminish people's misunderstandings and underestimations toward graphic designers? I came up with two possibilities:
Education. An extremely broad subject matter with so many possible outcomes, depending on how much the impact I want it to be and the target audiences. It could be something as simple as making a social movement through social medias and hashtags to something revolutionary as implementing graphic design into school curriculums.
Giving graphic design some new dimensions. In graphic design, we learn about the significance of semiotics; the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Visual elements includes visual language, in which one of the goal is to provoke certain emotions to the audiences. [3] On the other hand, graphic design contains context that reflect historical, socio-culture, and many other aspects of human civilisation.
In short...
What's Next and Some Challenges
Earning verifications and feedbacks from certain "big and busy" stakeholders, gatekeepers, and experts can take much more time than expected. I've been contacting several stakeholders regarding of my topic and I believe it requires longer time for them to write back. It sometimes even harder to catch their attention to write back.
Moving beyond area of interests. Giving graphic design a whole new dimension in it can means opening up many possibilities of inter-disciplinary studies, which I haven't determine yet.
Limited sources, especially regarding to the history. Due to my limited access to both primary and secondary research sources until I come back to Indonesia for further research and interventions, I rely so much on internet to gain new knowledges, which sometimes can be challenging.
Action research on the desired target audiences. This will lead to the next step of the journey: determining the target audiences of my project that has to be rigorously well-researched for the purpose of setting the boundaries of my research and in the end, producing the straightforward yet effective outcomes of the project.
Coming up with an intervention. I did this exercise with fellow classmates in our reading club meeting to imagine all of the possible interventions I could do for this project. It's amazing that feedbacks from peers could help me a lot with determining interventions.
I would like to end this post with an excerpt from Bruno Munari's Design as Art (1966):
"The designer is therefore the artist of today, not because he is a genius but because he works in such a way as to reestablish contact between art and the public, because he has the humility and ability to respond to whatever demand is made of him by the society in which he lives, because he knows his job, and the ways and means of solving each problem of design. And finally because he responds to the human needs of his time, and helps people to solve certain problems without stylistic preconceptions or false notions of artistic dignity derived from the schism of the arts.”
Footnotes
[1] BEKRAF, B. (2017). Data Statistik dan Hasil Survei EKONOMI KREATIF: Kerjasama Badan Ekonomi Kreatif dan Badan Pusat Statistik. [online] Bekraf.go.id. Available at: http://www.bekraf.go.id/profil [Accessed 7 May 2018].
[2] Ariyanti, H. (2018). Pekerja media dan industri kreatif rawan terkena depresi | merdeka.com. [online] merdeka.com. Available at: https://www.merdeka.com/peristiwa/pekerja-media-dan-industri-kreatif-rawan-terkena-depresi.html?utm_source=Pekerja+media+dan+industri+kreatif+rawan+terkena+depresi&utm_medium=Line+News+click&utm_campaign=Line+Today+-+News [Accessed 17 May 2018].
[3] Najafi, Farzaneh & Abbas, Merza. (2014). A Study of the Semiotic Understanding of Land Art. Asian Social Science. 10. 10.5539/ass.v10n17p170.