Design is a profession that has been embraced by everyone with a computer. They may not even refer to what they do as "design." The introduction of the computer as a tool to produce collateral for companies -- from general letterheads and brochures, to interactive experiences -- drastically modified the industry in ways that we are only beginning to understand.

From an interface of a software application, to the design of the keyboard and the actual computer that creative people use to ultimately solve a problem, the machine has become more than simply a tool to fledgling and sometimes fleeting designers, and this fact must be recognized.

If we examine the effect of tools on our society throughout written and unwritten history from the embrace of fire, to primitive writing instruments; from the wheel to weaponry, the fact that every one of these advances in society was in every respect "designed" by someone -- must be accepted to understand design in the first place. When we fast forward through centuries of design to the dawn of the computer, we can make a good argument that the speed a computer allows graphic design to be produced, has in many ways, become a detriment to the profession in general. When rubylith and typographers were left in the cold in the early 90's by studios that employed a new crop of young professionals brought up on Atari games and arcades, equipped with quicker decision making powers, the industry changed. But only now are these "jacks-of-all trades" beginning to realize the importance of looking at the concept of "idea generation" as premier to any solution enhanced by the speed of a processor. Certainly, the Macintosh, a well designed machine and GUI with a friendly demeanor, enticed creative-minded people into the world of design because it was part of a new wave. The "Age of Machines", to quote Alvin Toffler, unlocked a principle of business that design traditionally avoided.

The designer, before the computer, was a careful thinker and a large-scale problem solver. Glaser, Rand and Chwast, in their wisdom and naivety realized and defined the advertiser/designer as a Sage -- a person who when given time, could solve a problem. Later, when the computer became a means of producing design, the "thinking" was given a back-seat to efficiency and gave birth to a new type of graphic designer who mastered the techniques, but in many respects avoided the time factor required to produce truly immersive, intelligent solutions. Business owners became attracted to this new form of "mass production" design because it fit efficiently with the business mind. No more was there a "genius" who was summoned and given the time (and budget) to think about and resolve a solution.

Microsoft, the business to end all businesses, appeared and began to advertise that corporations did not require this "additional expense" of a designer to bog down the means to produce a solution. They ran an advertising campaign in the early 90's that annouced: "The business owner with Microsoft-supplied tools could now make their collateral themselves, print them out on company printers and save the money involved with hiring an advertising agency and printer". As more design -- "mediocre" at best -- came from the corporations, the expectations and money for hiring a design agency became less and less important to the bottom line.

Enter the Arpanet to the Internet. While initially a means for government agencies to share information, this information pipe was generously given to the university system as a means for doing the same thing on a college level. Businesses tapped into the internet when information sharing companies such as AOL, demystified this magical system and brought it to the home user in the early 90's.

Truthfully, the "dot-com" world was the opportunity for the design profession to redeem itself after a major shift in the attitudes and needs of creatives. New tools and a language (Hypertext Markup Language or "html" at first) was introduced and created a "super-designer" -- a programmer/creative type that could produce a solution that solved a problem that Microsoft could not initially deal with. However, in time, Microsoft eventually produced Home Page, a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) program, allowing the business-person to once again take expensive reigns from the designer, and make a web site experience that looked like it was produced by a "real web agency." The mistake is that where the advertising world had years to define itself before the computer began to change the landscape, this new dot-com world only had a short life-span before the corporations figured it out. The "dot-com" became the "dot-comedy" and the investment community turned a cold shoulder to the industry quicker than you could spout: "Change the world!"

The computer gave new powers to the graphic designer, and the software manufacturer took it away.

Dave Fletcher is a Founder and Creative Director of theMechanism, a maxi-media firm in New York City and London. Things certainly are not as "grave" as he makes them out to be in this rant, written in 2002 as the dust settled from the dot com bubble burst. But it's worth a revisit since he sounded like such a smarty-pants back then.