in computer limbo
Posted on July 29, 2003
Filed Under Design
Apple still estimates that my G5 will arrive “on or before 8/29″ So it’s count-down time. I’m beginning to move old files off my drive and onto my Firewire drive, cleaning out preferences and applications, etc. Not too much choice since I’m down to the last 9 GB on the drive and I don’t want to run into scratch disk problems (remember when 9 GB of space was a lot?)
Been super busy lately. The first round of eBay auctions are ending. Would you believe that some of the old soap magazines went for over $100?!? I can’t believe it either.
This morning I spent 2 hours trying to teach a CPA office-type person how to do an ad in InDesign. Nevermind my BFA in Graphic Design, my 10+ years of experience working in high-end desktop publishing and graphics applications, my nearly 2 years working in InDesign, my 7 years as a freelance artist. All you need to master publishing is a really fast Dell desktop and a copy of the latest Adobe applications. ::sigh:: They bought their in-house accounting person a copy of InDesign because they were paying a fortune to an ad agency and wanted to save the money. So I made $110 today, probably the same when I go back there on Friday. Had they commissioned me to do the ad, I would have billed them for about $400 (it’s a b&w ad) and the in-house person could have been spending billable hours doing what she does best instead of trying to be a graphic designer. I gave her a basic overview of graphic design principles: consistency, white space, leading, bleed, gutter (these were all foreign terms to her when I sat down) and then worked her through Photoshop and InDesign building her ad. Hey, she’s a smart lady. If any CPA can pick it up, she can but it’s still a little depressing if you know what I mean. At least she didn’t want to learn Quark. 
Comments
One Response to “in computer limbo”
I find that so depressing. People like us spend our time and money to go to school to learn all of these principles and then businesses let their secretaries design stuff. It’s no wonder why there is such poorly designed stuff floating around. I lost a big web client to someone who does work with FrontPage. How frustrating. Oh well, there site has gone down hill ever since.