Designers are everywhere nowadays. There are plenty of kids with a pirated version of Photoshop (or, more hopefully, Gimp) that can do what used to be up to the professionals. There’s an army of people proficient at designing, and not only that, they can edit video, audio, write copy (ok, that’s debatable), and more. It’s kind of hard for me to admit as one that had planned to build my career on the visual. It’s both sad and exciting to see visual literacy booming. Sad, because it’s no longer an exclusive club- it’s always disappointing to see something you have taken years to master picked up easily by a 15 year old. It’s exciting, though, because the possibilities for the visual continue to increase. More and more people are able to take what is in their head and turn it into something tangible- if digital representations can be called tangible. The results are sometimes disturbing, but it’s great to get a glimpse into so many minds, to have so many choices. I’m thinking of YouTube, of course, but also sites like Deviant Art and all the other places people hang out to share the visual. I love, too, how the “visual” is blending, expanding: the addictive game Linerider debuted on Deviant Art.
With all this, it should come as no surprise that companies are starting to outsource their marketing. Pepsi recently sent out a press release detailing their plans to have fans design billboards, even race car designs (found via Library Marketing). The recent flog uncoverings have demonstrated the wrong way to try to harness new web technologies for advertising. Pepsi may be on the right track in trying to involve people in the process. Might there be a future where armies of designers create advertising campaigns in order to compete for prize money- or even just for notoriety?
A more interesting question, for me, is: can we harness this mass of creative energy for something besides advertising? People obviously want to be involved in something- they want their voice heard. Why else would they post confessional videos to YouTube? I talked about this before, but I would love to see a community wide project that tries to harness this collective energy. I even did my final project for my Library Administration class last semester on a similar idea. Here in Lincoln we have these community art projects – they are designed so that “anyone” can get involved, but in reality, only the artists to. I would love to see that expanded.
I keep going back and forth about academic vs public libraries- the kind of things I keep thinking about may only be possible in a public library, but public libraries seem to have their own set of problems – lower play and less benefits, for one, but also the problems that come with being a community hang out. I will need to work in both before I make up my mind. I’m hoping my practicum will involve a little bit of public library experience. My problem is, there’s so much I want to try, but only so much time!