Chapter 2
The Mitosis of Specialized Design Roles
5 min read
Until the 1970s, there was essentially one visual design profession: graphic design. Those who weren't self-taught-and many active designers were autodidacts - typically studied fine arts. While some diversification existed, with designers working in various media, techniques, and purposes, everything revolved around a limited set of disciplines rooted in the origins of graphic design.
Mitosis {noun}: The type of cell division in which one cell divides into two cells that are the same, each with the same number of chromosomes as the original cell.
Some designers worked in advertising agencies, focusing on branding, ads, and storyboards. Others specialized in layout design for books, while another segment concentrated on packaging, brochures, and other collateral driven by the rise of consumer culture. The number of graphic designers increased in proportion to overall employment, and the profession remained relatively niche. The work was manual - a true craft. Beyond talent or basic skills, most learning occurred on the job, and new tools emerged infrequently.
Business cards for graphic designers simply read "Designer," or, for the more descriptive, "Graphic Designer." For example, take a look at Gilbert Lesser's letterhead from 1962 or Michael Cronan's business card from 1982.
Then came the computer, followed by software, new hardware, and new media - and the need to market all of them. By the 1990s, the profession began to soar. The number of graphic designers increased, although not as rapidly as that of software developers. Still, it was a snowball effect. By 2021, there were 294,200 graphic designers employed in the U.S. alone, with 36% of them working as freelancers.
Around 2010, following the burst of the dot-com bubble and the subsequent market recovery, a process of professional mitosis began, akin to how cells divide and multiply. For example:
First Division:
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Graphic designers working in software companies, gaming, or digital departments became "interactive designers" or "digital designers."
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Those in advertising agencies or publishing became "marketing designers" or "book designers."
Second Division:
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Interactive designers split into game designers and interface designers.
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Marketing designers evolved into digital designers (working primarily in ad agencies’ digital departments) and offline designers.
Third Division:
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Game designers further split into character designers and narrative designers.
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Interface designers split into UI designers and UX designers.
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Digital designers split into social media designers and web designers.
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Offline designers split into brand designers and print designers.
You get the idea.
designarchives.aiga.org
The question is: what drove this systematic fragmentation? Naturally, as new technologies and media emerged, design challenges evolved, requiring novel solutions and often necessitating distinct techniques and areas of expertise. However, this doesn't fully explain the current state, where the overlap between many roles is significant, and their definitions vary widely across organizations and even from project to project. For instance, one company may have a UX designer focused on prototyping, while another may have one primarily handling UI design. Similarly, UI designers and web designers often similarly approach tasks, differing only in the parts of the product they focus on. Social media designers and print designers also share overlapping processes, including exporting the same files.
The rapid pace and sometimes haphazard nature of role creation have outpaced the industry's ability to establish comprehensive standards, well-defined professions, or a consistent body of required knowledge.
Now, as the profession shifts under the influence of AI and must become more adaptive, broad, and versatile than ever before, many organizations find themselves in a situation where their design departments are made up of "Micro disciplinary" designers - when, more than ever, what they really need is a large and experienced group of graphic designers, pure and simple.