The Death of Print
I'm starting to see a trend with this blog and myself. Looks like once a month is all that I can really stomach at this point. It's just one more thing hanging over my head, and I feel like I should be doing something more productive most of the time. This blog isn't really a productive site that anyone is probably reading much anyhow. It could potentially be detrimental to my career if at some point it becomes apparent where I work and who is writing this. Hence, many of my more un-P.C. topics stay in a verbal forum with my friends on a Friday night at happy hour over a few beers and the occasional scotch. I like to think of this blog as underground - ha.
So what I want to talk about this go round is what something that has been eating at me for the last few months. Something that was amplified by this discussion I came across on the SMS, Linked-In. BTW, this SMS stuff is really making me schizophrenic, but that's another topic all together. I've just never seen such a frenzy of activity over something in my life, be it good or bad. Is this an actual job title now? Social Media Manager? Anyway...
...the notion of "The Death of Print" is finally here. Sometimes it feels like I'm just riding the wave (and it's about to close out on me), especially when the new guys coming into the shop are working in Word Press and talking this and that about how even HTML is old school. I'm hearing more and more about the trend towards big agencies bringing in peps with Computer Science majors or programmers who collaborate with the creative team to come up with any type of interactive media blitz that you could possibly fathom. But this is what's getting results. I've heard it said that geeks are joining the round table at creative brainstorming meetings (I guess artsy, fartsy, AD's and designers are the self-proclaimed coolest kids in town – but what do you expect with the oft-time egos?).
In Denver I can think of a bunch of print shops that have closed including: Hirschfeld, Spectrographics, L & M Pressworks, to name a few, not to mention the death of the DNA's Rocky Mountain News in the last year. Print Production Managers are out of work and becoming Print Production Brokers on a contract basis. The Account Managers are now expected to speak the language and make calls to print shops for pricing, etc. Designers are doing thier own print production work, and the trend continues.
With that being said, I am definately going into the world of website production. Instead of Facebooking or blogging in the evenings I have to reinvent myself again by learning another new trade, or offshoot of print production. So the obvious place to start is with Dreamweaver at night by helping my wife build her client websites and e-newsletters. It's a good transition for someone that considers themselves a power-user (there's a buzzword you don't hear anymore) of Photoshop. So yeah, that's basically what I have been doing in my spare time these days. Sounds like fun dosen't it? Maybe I can get my company to send me to night school, that would be sweet. It actually is helping take some of the angst out of my bitchy, non-professional writing style, tho. I'm sure, by the looks of it, that it will come back twofold once I get into the WYSIWYG, imperfect world of the web. Stay tuned.