Back

The Designer Family Tree — The New Commer

June, 7th 2011 posted by Chris Nuernberger

Have you ever looked back at your family tree to see where your family originated? Discovered the dirty secrets of your parents or that estranged uncle who’s worth millions? Did it shed a new light on who you are and how your past has influenced the present world around you? With websites like Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org, unearthing your past is easier than it ever has been before. This got me thinking; could this same unearthing of history provide the same inspiration and pride for us designers as it sometimes does for individuals looking for insight (or a payout) into their families?

The oldest relatives (our great great great… great grandfather) of our profession would have to be the one who made the Lascaux cave paintings. Telling us tales of the good ol’ days from the reclined position of their Hover Round. From that, our profession has gone through countless generations (Egyptian Hieroglyphics, the Gutenberg press, Typewriters, Photocomposition, Postscript with countless other offspring mixed in between) and now has become a collective of technology, word, and form.

Now I’d like to introduce the newest member of this great design and communication family tree — Digital Publishing. It’s like traditional publishing and the Web got together one night. With the candles lit and rose pedals spread around the room, they got a little freaky and consummated the marriage. A few months later we’re welcoming with open arms triplets — the iPad, Kindle, and Nook.

Traditional Publishing and the Web could not be more proud. Bringing to life the written word and opening up yet another mode of communication. It feels like we’re living in dog years with how fast they’ve grown up. We’ve skipped the crawling and walking stages and are now watching them drive off in our shinny new car (hoping that they don’t start texting the second they get on the highway). The proof is in the crushed carrots with nearly 15 million iPads sold in 2010 and an estimate from IDC that 70.8 million media tablets will be sold in 2012. They are bound to find that awkward stage in life where acne and the opposite sex present problems at every turn but as they mature, we can sit back and watch their off spring take us in new and exciting directions.

So what does this mean for us, the designers, who belong to this new generation that doesn’t seem to sit still or follow the speed limits? Digital publishing is where it is at and will be for some time. It is the next and most logical progression of our profession and fortunately there are tools out there that make the learning curve as simple as putting together the familiar two-page spread or blog post.