cultivation of necessity
This semester I have 12 credit hours and two jobs. Should be interesting, or at least that is what I have been telling myself. I do though, have other things on my mind. Being in my third year of my major, I have realized that my mind is drifting more towards the future as I continue on.
I, like other students will be searching out an internship this semester as well. There are a few positives and negatives to this situation though. In the current economic climate, it is going to be rather difficult to land a job right now… or at least they tell us. As students, we are more or less buying ourselves time though. The good news, is that might actually be quite the blessing. The bad news, is what that might mean to our industry if the economic plight is slow to recover.
Demand for advertising is diminishing rapidly as cutting costs to stay afloat is becoming the quick fix for major companies right now. Business won’t stop by any means, but what will happen for us students is one of a couple things. Companies that traditionally offer the best experiences, are unpaid internships. Ideally though, you want one that pays since your work is part of their business and making them money. I think though, because of this economic situation, a lot of the work that is going to be passed on to freelance illustrators and designers is now going to be done in-house to save money. With this, comes a greater potential for interest in interns. They are relatively low cost employees, and several of them working at a lower rate than a freelancer might can get the same amount of work done. So the good news, it might actually be sort of easy to get an internship this year….. the bad news, it’s not as likely to be a paid internship as it has been in the past.
This type of situation though, is not entirely different then when factories hire in scabs to replace union workers on strike. It’s a bandage to cover a wound that unfortunately might be rather slow to heal. So even though we are getting this great experience, it might be under a cast cloud of pessimism in some places. So far, some of the internships that I have seen available sound a lot more like job listings for a full-time employee. Not someone who is still in college. The trouble with this, is that there is potential for us as students to be hired in as a cost cutting measure in the larger corporate structures… sadly leaving someone out there looking for a job out in the cold.
Though these are possibilities, and ideally not a reality, I sincerely hope that this economic situation that not only America is in, but also the rest of the world, starts to turn around soon. The history of design is old, but profession of Graphic Design is still young. There has been a world of growth and the publics recognition for its need and benefits also has helped the profession develop in recent time. Let’s hope that we have had enough time to cultivate the necessity of our talents so that there isn’t much in-fighting for jobs and/or internships in 2009.
