15 years ago I was telling anyone who would listen that apprenticeships in Graphic Design were the way forward.

This conclusion was reached for several reasons:

We had far more “Graphic Designers” pouring out of colleges and Uni’s than there were jobs to fill (hence the number of graphic design and communication qualifications now held by Tesco employees, building labourers and admin assistants).

15/16 years ago I interviewed the first graduates whose portfolios were completely made up of computer generated graphics. This change had happened over a very short period of less than 3 years; going from completely hand rendered (drawing and painting to you and me) to an element of new-fangled Computer Aided Design to 50/50 proper art and computer graphics to everything being a digital print out. It was this glamorous high tech world that was attracting kids away from other more traditional careers and draining new blood away from engineering and sciences.

The crisis that was facing precision manufacturers and the fear of there not being the future industrial designers and scientists who we would need to compete in the World was recognised by a small number of politicians. The comments emanating from Government, more than educators, made it obvious that the answer should be to divert funds away from the Arts and into the heavier science, maths and engineering courses.

But this was 1996, a time when quite a few sensible mutterings were gaining ground and despite the tabloid scandal mongering drowning it out for most of the electorate, some of us were still filtering out the nonsense and seeing the plan.

The National Lottery idea was taking off and starting to fund those things such as the arts, heritage and sport that John Major couldn’t justify being funded by general taxation (good idea John) a National Institute for Support was being planned, its headquarters to be based in Sheffield said the Tory PM. Everything was starting to be prioritised to put public funds to work where they were most needed and those still important arts and sports etc being funded from new sources with the ultimate aim of sports and culture becoming self-sustaining.

It was these and many other positive moves to a different way of doing things that made me think that eventually the Graphic Design courses we had become used to recruiting from would eventually disappear, being replaced by apprentices learning on the job with training supplemented by night school and day release and private courses run by software manufacturers.

Then the Blair era started.

A lot of the innovative ideas for restructuring how we did things went out of the window, vested interests changed previously solid plans; just one example being The English Institute of Sport which was still to be built in Sheffield but not as a headquarters, there are others around the country due to protests from Mr Blairs friends in the South.

Devolving powers to Wales and Scotland, devolving responsibility for inflation to the Bank of England were all designed to side step potential banana skins, and blame, in the brave New Labour World. Youth unemployment was another; better to have them on courses than bulking up the unemployment figures and educators advised the government that the easiest courses to get school leavers onto were graphic design, beautician training and flower arranging – all that hard sciency stuff would put them off: Plus, it would mean teachers would have to try harder to, well, teach!

Everything became spin, touchy feely, projected perception instead of reality driven.

15 years later we have too many people coming off graphic design courses, those that can’t find jobs end up working for Tesco or setting up their own businesses, because the computers they have grown up with mean they don’t actually have to draw anything.

These baby businesses that have been lauded by politicians, mean they are learning the ropes (that they should be handling for at least 5 years working for someone else to become real designers) at the expense of clients who are then left with a bad taste in the mouth, about the industry in general and a belief that if these kids can produce commercial design and branding, no matter how badly, surely the receptionist or marketing assistant can do just as well on one of the firms PCs and a copy of Coral Draw.

There is, actually, no alternative to an experienced creative marketing company when it comes to branding any serious enterprise – but that’s another blog.

Now, finally, after a decade and a half of this chipping away at the credibility of the Graphic Design industry, and only a slight rebalancing of priorities between Science/Engineering courses and Arts regardless of actual input from politicians a strange thing is happening; the kids are cottoning on to the facts of commercial life.

Inadvertently, the decision to allow Universities to up their fees has made our youngsters stop and think about the amount of debt they will end up with and the knock on effect is those who are looking for an eventually high paying job in Medicine, Engineering, Accountancy and Law are going to University, while those who wanted to go into the “Cultural Industries” have heard the horror stories of the lack of potential employment, the low pay when they get here (driven down by the computer aided dumbing down and perception of the industry) and decided it isn’t worth the debt.

However if you really want to design, money isn’t usually the first thing on your mind, at least until you start earning, and these school leavers are contacting us direct, looking for apprenticeships.

Ok, so this is how I have always thought the graphic design industry should operate, take those creative school leavers on as apprentices, send them on courses as necessary and let them learn on the job.

16 years ago a trainee designer who joined us straight from college said he had learnt more in his first 3 weeks than he had in the previous 3 years at college. He’s now a director of the company he joined originally on work experience.

This is a trade, we are artisans and artists, it is about technique and touch and instinct and becoming better at what you do with every job you do. It is not a science where you gain knowledge by experimentation but you already know what the outcome should be because an education in maths and physics gives you a template for predictable outcomes.

We only fool ourselves when we call this a profession, we may perform our duties professionally but what we “do” is a trade and we should be as proud of our industry and its effect on the economy and the environment as much as any scientist or engineer should be of their achievements.

This is why properly organised apprenticeships will always be more appropriate to both the individuals and the industries needs than oversubscribed college courses.

The bad news is we are not ready for this change.

Apprenticeships were the aim of parents for their children for a couple of thousand years before the educational establishments took over the role less than a century ago. An apprentice earned next to nothing – go back far enough and parents would pay a master craft or tradesman to take their offspring as an apprentice. This was expected because once trained (or made) usually after 5 years the apprentice could call himself a Craftsman or Tradesman and as soon as he took on an apprentice of his own he became a Master Craftsman: From there they would always make a living.

Today, the expectations of youth, even the creative ones, are that everything should happen tomorrow and they should be able to draw a wage that will immediately buy them designer brands and put them on the property ladder as soon as they leave school. The expectation of politicians is that small businesses will fund apprenticeship schemes.

Unfortunately a few pounds contribution from the State towards wages, and then only for a few months is not going to encourage many small businesses to take apprentices on. Another pair of hands, even on the minimum wage is not going to give anyone a return for at least a year or two and the costs of courses and supervision makes the cost of an apprentice closer to that of a fully trained employee. Experience then says that when they are fully trained and you are starting to see a return on your investment they leave to work for a bigger company on a higher wage that their new employers can afford because it hasn’t cost them a bean to train them in the first place.

As I predicted, for almost if not quite the reasons it has happened, apprenticeships are making a return and I’d like to see it work.

I just can’t see the expectations of the apprentices or politicians being satisfied by what SMEs in today’s economy can offer.

This morning I am stretching canvas.

I made up all the frames for this order last night, when the building had emptied and those who need to concentrate would not be disturbed by my banging – with a rubber mallet – knocking the wooden bars together.

Today, an hour before the thinkers return to their desks, I’m checking the frames are square before starting with the stretching pliers, staple gun, claw hammer (more banging this time wedges into the corners to make each canvas as tight as a drum) …

I don’t mind this work; repetitive maybe, but it takes skilful hands and I’ve been doing this for 5 years now so I’ve done the apprenticeship. I don’t worry about it anymore; it keeps hands and arms in shape – and you can let your mind wander; think about other things or nothing at all:

Takes me back to screen printing when I was a teenager, back in the days when women liked men who were good with their hands. Something happened in the 80’s and suddenly heterosexual females preferred men in suits with chests sans hair and male grooming fetishes.

When these are finished or in an hour and a half around 9.00am, when I’ll start disturbing folk if I don’t stop – I’ll start my main job, writing copy for ads, designing layouts for brochures, planning the next partnership…

Thinking – not wanting to be disturbed.

It has a lot to answer for this thinking thing.

Septuagenarian David Hockney is enjoying yet more critical acclaim, this time for his new exhibition of East Yorkshire landscapes.

Once again the outstanding style is unmistakeable, unchanged and simply brilliant. The effect that this exhibition is likely to have on the Art World; possibly making landscape painting commercially viable for the first time since its heyday in the 17/1800s when the landed gentry wanted their newly landscaped estates committed to canvas and renderings of mountains, waterfalls and fells were the must have for a well-appointed dining or drawing room, but these for once are not the most notable highlights of Hockney’s latest work.

While the collection contains the expected hand painted canvasses, this time the majority of the works were created on an Apple iPad and produced as large format paper prints.

“Who wouldn’t want one? Picasso or Van Gogh would have snapped one up,” said Mr Hockney when interviewed by the BBC last year before his Paris exhibition.

Well… yes and no.

While the technology is amazing and eons away from the first computer graphic interfaces of 30 years ago, brush and paint it still aint.

Thinking about the David Hockney style in particular I’d be amazed if Apple hadn’t seen the marketing opportunity of introducing the great artist to the high end gadgets – but technology has rules, parameters that sooner or later see individuality take a back seat to what is possible in pixels.

Still these stunning Hockney pictures show that an artist is an artist and the medium isn’t what we should be concerned with; but as an artist it seems to me that we should be striving to produce original work that can’t be produced (or reproduced) through a computer interface.

Piacasso or Van Gogh in big bold colours and almost primitive lines may have loved the iPad but Michael Angelo?

Apple still has a long way to go to match that technique.

I came up with this phrase “Product Drift” (© 2011 me )

It sounded better than “Technology Trickle”

I’m now using it to cover all things from products developed for one industry before being adopted unchanged by another – such as surgical scalpels that have been used extensively in arts, crafts, design and print for at least 40 years. (Who first thought of that? A graphic designer/surgeon?)

The products re-developed from high end to low end such as components designed for aircraft and F1 cars that are re-configured until they are cost effective enough to use in the family hatchback.

The ideas showcased on catwalks in London, New York, Paris and Milan which result in colours and cut filtering down to Miss Selfridge, M&S & Primark.

You know all this – finding new markets for a product without re-tooling, or collaboration between different parts of the same industry for the benefit of a wider public is the way of the World and no bad thing.

What is just as inevitable but also damaging to the branding and marketing of every business is product drift in design software.

It is difficult for most of us to imagine the World without computer technology – probably impossible for anyone under 45 – but back then Graphic Designers had to be able to do things modern designers don’t necessarily have to do – they had to be able to draw.

They had to start with a truly blank sheet of paper – no instant effects or hi res image manipulation, fonts and logos were hand drawn, the hardware then was technique and material that had stood the test of time for decades, in some cases centuries – but the main difference was the division between those who could design and those who couldn’t, the only software being talent, training and imagination.

It wasn’t surprising that it took years to convince the majority of designers to move off the drawing board and onto the keyboard.
What brought them (us) around were the intuitive graphic interfaces, the software that meant you still had to know what you were doing to produce great design.

This is still true but only just: Messer’s Adobe, Apple and Quark have integrated their products so far into the design industry – they almost are the design industry – kids coming out of college talk more about Best Practice, Base Line Grids, Standards Compliance, the latest filters and effects than they do about design.

What they don’t realise is this reliance on technology will eventually put them out of work.

The big software and hardware producers have saturated the professional design industry – there is no more upselling into new products they can offer – just the bi-annual upgrades. With the industry no longer growing they are having to find new markets to sustain their own growth.

So – the software comes out at premium (rip off) prices into the design industry, and our feedback help the developers to improve the software – then the Product Drift starts.

First into partner providers; software developers specialising in particular sectors where pro DTP elements are integrated into third party packages to create templates for on line directories and websites; Photoshop elements built into editing software simple enough for untrained photographers to use to a standard that the general public wouldn’t know isn’t that good without a proper job for comparison purposes.

Now the Product Drift continues; with iPhones, iPads and Androids given slicker quicker processes to carry out tasks which actually take longer to do in the full blown professional versions of the software their apps are based on.

Very soon if not now – professional designers will have to re-establish their credentials as Real Designers – start to show the difference between those who can design and those who can’t; just as we had to do 25 years ago, but with the increasing cynically planned Product Drift and dumbing down of the technology it won’t be who can use the technology that will count – company receptionists the FDs daughter and a number of 5 year olds will have their own versions of the software that will do the same things more easily – the real difference will be vision, creativity, experience of what works – and what is between your ears.

Those businesses who use Real Designers … Real Artists…. need to stand out from the mediocre dross penny pinching business owners will be rolling out.

Maybe if you’re a Real Designer who wants to carry on being indispensible to client companies…

… You might want to grab a pencil.

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We live in interesting times as the old Chinese curse would wish upon us.

Still, it makes you wonder if all the trouble in the World from global rows and civil wars to personal relationships isn’t just all about an inability to communicate, as if different languages and cultures and points of view and individual experiences colouring judgement aren’t enough there’s also the gender gap.

No don’t panic, I’m not going to go there.

Perhaps I am so set in my ways that I can’t adjust to speaking any other way – have I dispensed with subtlety? Do I not know when it’s best to keep the trap shut? Are my explanations so obscure I am the only one who understands me?

Maybe that’s how everyone is. Maybe we are so comfortable in the knowledge that we know what we are saying, the way the meaning is taken by anyone else is just – expected?

It would explain a lot – how many times have you come away from a conversation thinking everyone was in agreement only to find out later everyone else’s understanding of what was meant is different from yours?
Just when you think everything is fine, light, and happy, your perception crashes and burns with just a few words from someone you thought was with you, of one mind, there for the long run.

If you were to get your head around the scarily plausible fact that no one else ever thinks exactly the way you do, and more often than not they may process thought completely differently, then creatively that’s quite exciting – but in every other sense knowing everyone else seems to be better at disguising the differences than you are, and they are not letting you in on the secret that they know you don’t know, it can be quite depressing.

Or is that just me?