Bit of a rant here, so apologies in advance to any injured souls. Not sure if there’s a better place for this, so feel free to move it.
I’ve been on Instagram for a while now, and only recently started a business account. I have a few designers and illustrators I follow around, and sure, get inspired by some of their work. I’m also sure a lot of creatives do the same, and it’s ok to be inspired by other people’s work. That being said, there’s almost a cult following of a few of these Instagram designers, and I keep discovering more and more “designers” on there using practically the same logos, same colour palettes, same fonts, and they all have the same squarespace websites and feeds. I wouldn’t call this “following a trend” either, just copy pasting, basically.
Half of these designers are part of a quite big women-based directory in the US, charging ridiculous amounts for brand design, and most of them are just recycling Creative Market materials and flaunting them on their feeds as their work for clients. So my rant is what the heck happened to the “creative” part of being a designer? Is this not a requirement anymore? Sure it’s the digital age, information age, call it what you will, and yes resources are easier to come by, but jesus, are we really that desperate to succeed as designers without having a creative bone in our bodies? Or is this just a result of today’s pace in the business? Curious where it’s going.
Among all these, I have found one designer who actually keeps reminding others to credit where credit due, she designs her own stuff, and sticks to certain principles. Other than that I’ve days when I think I should seek a less saturated industry. (Perhaps a grave digging business.)