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What Design Can’t Do — Graphic Design between Automation, Relativism, Élite and Cognitariat | ENTREPRECARIAT

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“The thing that pisses me off the most is the degradation of the intellectual role of the designer.” This is what my friend tells me, as we listen to each other’s anguished outpourings replete with VAT numbers, freelancing and short-term contracts. And that made me wonder what constitutes that role, whether it actually existed, how it vanished and what replaced it. Trying to answer these questions, I’d like to focus on graphic design as it is the field where I come from, and I believe it represents a paradigmatic case within the so-called creative industries. These days we hear a lot about the gig economy, the economy of little jobs, of chores. Platforms like Uber, AirBnB or Foodora are quickly becoming the direct intermediaries of any kind of service, a seemingly unavoidable development since they are prone to monopolization. Graphic design is no exception: online marketplaces like Fiverr and TaskRabbit offer access to graphic designers able to create a logo, a website, a poster. On F

[Parts of this essay are now included in the book What Design Can’t Do (Set Margins’, 2023).] “The thing that pisses me off the most is the degradation of the intellectual role of the designer.” This is what my friend tells me, as we listen to each other’s anguished outpourings replete with VAT numbers, freelancing and short-term contracts. And that made me wonder what constitutes that role, whether it actually existed, how it vanished and what replaced it. Trying to answer these questions, I’d like to focus on graphic design as it is the field where I come

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