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Being a senior designer doesn’t make you safe anymore
The design industry is experiencing a shift where traditional experience may no longer guarantee job security for senior designers. As access to design knowledge and tools has increased, the value of long-standing practices is being challenged, prompting a need for experienced designers to adapt and learn from younger, more adaptable creatives to remain relevant.
FastCompany: What if experience is becoming a disadvantage? Over the past month or so, I’ve been having some pretty gnarly conversations about the state of the design industry, especially when it comes to hiring and firing. Spend just a short amount of time online and you’ll find stories of rising unemployment, teams being culled, and junior designers struggling to find their first job. It’s savage. I recently heard a crazy statistic from a trusted friend that less than 5% of the design industry is made up of people aged between 20 and 25 . . . a frighteningly accurate reflection of the state of panic we currently find ourselves in.
And anyone with a bit of foresight can see the knock-on effect. If we stop giving young designers the opportunity to enter our industry, who becomes the future custodians of it? But that’s not what I want to talk about today.
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For information, go to themadebyjames.com.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"http:\/\/themadebyjames.com","theme":{"bg":"#000000","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91563943,"imageMobileId":91563950,"shareable":false,"slug":"","wpCssClasses":""}} While we are rightly incredibly worried about the people struggling to get into the design industry, I think we’ve been so busy looking at the bottom of the ladder that we haven’t noticed what’s beginning to happen closer to the top of it.
The people we assumed were safe might not be as safe as we thought. I’m talking about the designers with 15-plus years of experience behind them. The people who did everything they were told to do and, for many years, reaped the rewards. They put in the time, mastered their craft, built their experience, and worked their way up into more senior positions. I predict they could be facing a very different kind of problem. How things used to work For most of our careers, experience has been an advantage you could hang your hat on. Not just in design or the creative industries, but pretty much everywhere.
The more you knew about a particular subject, the more valuable you became. This value would then be rewarded by an increasing salary or more notable position within a company’s hierarchy. The old promise of experience was simple . . . the longer you did something, the more valuable you became to the world. But … I’m beginning to wonder whether that equation is changing because access has changed. The knowledge that was once locked away in ivory towers and hidden within the agency walls, knowledge that took years and years to accumulate, is now becoming easier to access.
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The article addresses a significant shift in the design industry that affects job security for senior designers, making it highly relevant and impactful for brand strategy professionals, while the concept of adapting to new trends is somewhat common but still carries a fresh perspective.