Lately my company has been in the process of hiring a Production Artist. It has shed light on a lot of interesting truths. Some good, some not so good. Either way, there is definitely a scale of talent regardless of experience or not.

It seems strange with the applications we are getting that the longer people have been claiming to be involved with the web, the worse their work gets. There seems to be a direct relation. As with anything there are exceptions to the rule, and taking a sample size of say 150 versus 10, the data would most certainly change. Counter to most professions, where experience is a “must”, I don’t see the production artist, or design position as one of those.

I have a few thoughts as to why this trend happens.

Production

The web changes every day. The way people code websites changes as well. Many of the more “experienced” applicants I have seen have had much worse code. My theory is that as you get older, keeping up with the code joneses becomes much more difficult. Life and priorities change, leaving little time to pick up the latest greatest CSS book. If an applicant isn’t coding with at least 80% of the layout and design being controlled by CSS, they won’t get an interview. It’s just the way to build layouts now.

Artist

As with coding changing, so do trends in web design. If one hasn’t adopted CSS as an essential peace to layout freedom, then their designs will end up looking exactly like they are coded, in tables. A lot of the older more “experienced” applicants are still of the, “I have learned photoshop and now I know dreamweaver, and i don’t know anything about design, but I can build a website.” I think of what’s hot on the web right now, and it’s all being done by people from their 20’s to early 30’s. Somewhere in there people stop smoking pot and start having kids, a sure fire way to keep one from exploring design with taste. Especially, if they weren’t any good to start with.

Experience

I am not saying older people cannot work a production artists on the web, but chances are, the older people working on the web have already built their network so they don’t need to apply for an entry-level web production job, they have contacts. Not to mention they have probably all been scooped up if their work is good AND they have experience.

What does that leave in the 30+ crowd who don’t do great work? Hacks. The problem with the production artist profession is that everyone’s cousin builds websites, which means to the public, if a site looks the same, it is coded the same. To us of the standards cut, this is anything but true. Just because you can operate photoshop and dreamweaver, doesn’t mean you can build good websites. Would you call me a carpenter just because I can hammer two boards together? No.

There is a talent scale and if you are older designing and building, you better be damn good, or current. This is all a very scary future for those who aren’t going into this profession with a full head of steam. There is no room for half assing it.

It’s the truth.

(I am sure many ex production artists 30+ are probably running things more than they are coding, keep in mind my HUGE generalization stems from a collection of resumes. )

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