There is an increasing number of great (and I mean great) tools that help people produce their own designed works. These help-yourself and off-the-shelf design tools and templates are pretty good these days, and getting better.
At the AIGA Conference in Denver, I saw a presentation given by Shoshana Berger and Grace Hawthorne, co-founders of Ready-Made Magazine. The talk was entitled “Disposable Design.” The message at the end of the talk was “you don’t have to be a designer to think like a designer.” While I appreciate the sentiment and want the world to “get” design, these tools and templates show that the popular meaning of the verb “to design” is changing. “Designing” today often means using templates and tools to make beautiful things.
Design consumers may be rightly shocked by the cost of original design when these tools provide so much for so little. The enormous effort and work behind the designed templates and the function of these self-serve tools is invisible to the user.
So this is our new problem: to help our customers and potential customers understand the problem solving and work that goes into developing original designs, and finding design consumers for whom original work that solves unique problems is valuable. For people who have simple problems, who need tried-and-true communication tools, who have no budget for new ideas — those people don’t really need us anymore. Maybe they never did. And they have been set free. We shouldn’t be shy about recommending these tools to them. When they can help our customers communicate effectively given the resources they have, why not?
Some examples:
Ellen Lupton, a designer we admire a lot, has written a series of new books on designing things yourself. They’re well-written, with lots of good help for the amateur designer.
Apple offers great looking templates for websites and a host of other media. Make your own movies, publish your own books, design your own e-Cards. It helps a lot if you have an Apple computer first, btw…
Stock Layouts gives you very professional templates for very reasonable prices. They’ve got the healthcare brochure with the apple on the cover. They’ve got the Warhol-esque bright color montage, they’ve got a lot of trendy work.
There’s a slew of online printers who give away free layouts and have “design” services. These are actually “layout” services, but very few people know the difference.
Companies like Moo.com and tinyprints.com are offering high quality announcements, letterpress and all. It’s pretty damn good. There’s no need to design a low quantity custom invitation anymore. We might be able to design it better, but we can’t deliver it cheaper.
Design your own greeting cards with your own photos and make it available for the world to use. How cool it that?
You can download very cute craft templates from Martha Stewart, clip-art, pumpkin carving templates, gift tags, invitations, e-cards.
Got more great design tools to share, or ideas about how to distinguish the product of problem-solving designers from the product of do-it-yourself design tools? Then comment on…
see also pre-designed templates