Peter Eller on Design

75 years ago When the CBC was founded it was a bold move by the government. In bringing this new medium of radio to everyone in Canada, it bound the country together like never before; it made our country better  This was no small task: they built radio towers across the country, they lead innovation in this new world.

Today the CBC is a shadow of its former self.  When its funding was cut in the early nineties and celebrities like Peter Gzowskii and Vicki Gabaro left it was the beginning of a long slide to mediocrity. The CBC costs every Canadian twenty five cents a year.  In the UK, the BBC costs every Brit 75 cents with a population more than three times that of Canada.  You can see why the BBC continues to do very well while the CBC declines.

I’m not going to say very much about CBC TV because it is fundamentally flawed. Its comercial support has made it into just another me-too TV station without any distinguishing benefits.  Why do we license wheel of fortune to generate ad revenue to pay for made in Canada content that no one watches? Unlike CBC radio it has no net benefit.

Crisis: Half danger half opportunity

The best way forward in my mind is for the CBC to became a national wireless internet provider then it will become what the government should have been doing all along: providing infrastructure.

Using the new 4G technology they should build out a national network to provide internent connectivity to every Canadian as close to free as possible, all content will eventually be carried over internet protocol, radio, tv, telephone, its inevitable. there are a number of ways to carry this out with bandwidth limits or download caps above wich a fee is attached. Just imagine how efficient out economy would be with free wireless internet right across the country. what an unbelievable business avantage for Canadian companies

What’s more because CBC would be the POP for all Canadian internet traffic.  The cost of traffic inside the country would be almost zero. Fees would only be incurred from traffic originating outside the country so national bits would not count against your usage cap. There you have your built in incentive for Canadian content

Now you may be thinking that this would put all those other ISP’s telephone and cable companies out of business. Maybe, maybe not, but here is the key: the CBC will stop producing content.  CBC will only be the highway provider. The private sector can continue to produce content and generate revenue like they always have through advertising but if they are making money from being a monopoly gate keeper then they deserve to go belly up. Governments are built for providing infrastructure for all of us, better and cheaper than the private sector. I’ve heard estimates of the actual cost of my curent 20 megabit connection in the area of five dollars instead of the over sixty five I pay now.

This will remove the conflict of interest of ISP’s who provide the medium as well as the messages by separating the people who produce content from those who deliver it.

The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada GDC in its current manifestation serves little or no use to the best Graphic Designers.  The GDC attracts novices who seek credibility and an organization that can lend it to their not yet fully developed abilities. The barrier for entry is far too low; practically anyone who applies is accepted, eroding the quality of members and reducing its desirability as an organization.

The best designers don’t need an organization to lend them credibility but rather it is the best designers who give the organization its credibility. Only if the benefits are real and or membership is mandatory will the very best designers become members and the organization become meaningful.

One solution is to make the term Graphic Designer a legally registered title.
if you want to be a hair dresser in BC you need to register  but not so for graphic design. When Ontario began to legally register its designers the number of members exploded.

We have to develop a code of ethics which is mandatory, rigidly and transparently enforced. If you take part in an an unsanctioned competition or do work speculatively you lose your license to practice Graphic Design. It’s time that we grow up and take our position in the market place along side other professions like lawyers, doctors, accountants and engineers.

The GDC has to encompass all forms of Graphic Design.  It’s membership is currently primarily print designers which is a dying medium and unless we want to die with it we must encompass UX / UI designers, game designer web designers, animators which are all fundamentally Graphic Design unless we wish to be replaced by nebulous New Media organizations.  I could write an entire article on the stupidity of the term “new media” but that’s another topic.

We have to stop receiving sponsorship from companies that sell to graphic designers ( Aquent is a parasite on the business of graphic design the fact they even exist is another example of the failing of the GDC). The GDC must  become a sponsor of event for people who buy graphic design. Instead of our sponsors selling to our members we need to sell our members in markets they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. We need to showcase the profession of Graphic Design and promote its value. currently I get more value out of free likemind meetings than a GDC membership

Design competitions like graphex are a waste, they only show a portion of the good work being done and rarely the best. The events are mostly attended by the people who produce the work. Like this years grammy awards what it showcased was an industry woefully out of touch with its market

The GDC web site is an embarrassment to design, this is a very big issue.
Our web site has to be one of the best designed sites in the country it has to have real services that members use. it has to be constantly evolving and improving. unfortunately thats not the case.

Applies Arts magazine one of the so called benefits of membership is a waste of paper. In the last year it rarely made it out of its plastic bag  usually going straight to recycling. If I had a choice it would have been canceled like my Vancouver Sun subscription. The experience of leafing through both these publications was the same: “seen it , seen it , don’t care , seen it”. the magazines value has been stripped away. The days when you could get a subscription to Communication Arts and keep up to date with the latest trends is long gone the web does it better.  We have become Block Buster in a Netflix world.

If Graphic Design were a legally registered trade then membership would be mandatory, we could encompassed all the current forms of graphic design, we could removed unqualified designers and support our members with more business development vehicles and increased membership fees. If done correctly the benefits should far out weight the increased membership costs; with our current membership fees the revers is true

We need to have an association that can voice our views to government. We need to address the future of copyright in Canada. We need to get our share of royalties for our work we need to protect our members rights . Every time you buy a blank DVD  musicians get a portion why don’t visual artist also get a portion of that levy? the answer by know is obvious we don’t have effective representation. We’re not at the table so we don’t get taken seriously.
We need to look at how our members can get out from under hourly wages and get into licensing and royalties like writers and musicians at the very least we need to advocate for our members and have a clear positions on where we stand.

Like the TED conference the barrier to entry is very high; as high as the rewards.