Paul Rand, a godfather of graphic design, writes in his book "A Designer's Art:"


I can only dream of a time when what Rand says – in "Art for Art's Sake," the very first chapter of his book – was right.

Today, the once holly institution of 'the sketch' is dying, if not already dead. The computer suffocated it slowly, from the day the first Macintosh smiled its Finder icon to the world of graphic design. Even when sketches are involved in the process – the logo roughs and studies, for instance, they rarely leave the designer's desk or office – no board would ever accept a logo-on-a-napkin presentation nowadays, maybe not even from a superstar like Rand.

The approval cycles are much more condensed today, everybody wants to make a decision on a logo, layout, package or any other item as close to the final development stage as possible. This is also true for motion graphics and video. Stock image, 3D and previsualisation are all tools to cut corners and get a fast feedback from the client.

But this doesn't mean his autonomy increased. Nope. Today although he doesn't need someone to set the type for him, he needs plenty of strategists, research people and planners to guide him through the shallow waters of the market, the research hidden corals and the competition's sharks.

The profession evolves. It's not necessarily better or worse – the way the culture itself is not better or worse than it was 50 years ago – just that it's different.