Is Design Oversaturated?
Yes, but that may not be a bad thing.
Decked out in designer sunglasses and an over-the-top leather jacket, superstar-designer Karim Rashid took to Facebook Live while walking down 10th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. The 8 minute and 22-second video from October 2021 features Rashid, walking and talking into this phone camera, presenting concerns about design losing ground as a respected profession.
The point of his monologue has a lot to do with expressing that designers should be compensated appropriately despite an increase in supply. He suggests that we, as designers, need to work collectively to make sure that we only work on projects where the pay and treatment of designers are fair, ultimately keeping the quality of design at a high level. He ends by saying, “Let’s not be under-appreciated. Let’s not be underestimated. Let’s be rigorous. Let’s keep this profession alive.”
This sentiment comes from the notion that there seems to be an exponential growth of new designers coming out of design schools. Combine that with vast amounts of expanding technologies, high rates of copying, easy access to cheap (bad) design, and DIY, designers are outnumbered by all of these things that circumvent them. On its face, it looks like a supply and demand issue, where competition results in undercutting fees, and many designers are working…
