The way we communicate, one-to-one, one-to-friends, one-to-many and many-to-many, changes by the minute. Since print changes, um, by the decade, people find other, more efficient ways to do things they used to do in print.

Say what you will about tactile quality, well-understood interface, browsability, portability, or readability. Print forms may retain advantages there but in more and more cases they do not overcome digital advantages: instantaneous availability without boundaries, at much lower cost per unit of information communicated.

So the nut graf of this conversation becomes:

Information architects will see high and increasing demand in coming years for their skills and experience. Graphic artists focused on print will see gradually decreasing demand in coming years for their skills and experience.

Given that newspapers are leading the slide down the print crater, graphic artists who do not transition to information architecture might be able to climb back up into another print specialty for a while, but will never return to the glory days where we actually felt we were changing newsroom cultures and winning new readers.

So what is an “information architect”?

In my view, it is someone who thinks of the digital world in three distinct demand camps, with overlaps: communication, entertainment, and information. We play mostly in the information space, which, unfortunately, is the least engaging on average of the three camps.

Don’t believe me? Think about how much time people you know (NOT you, because you’re in the news business and that makes you an outlier) spend sending text messages, ordering products, or watching online video vs. actually reading news articles.

So an information architect starts by knowing the difference. Her specialty is optimizing information to be communicated in its best, most efficient form for the broadest possible recipient set. But she does not stop there. She also knows how to engage people in conversations, and form communities, around specific types of information.

In that specialty, the graphic arts have a role, but it is just a small share of defining an overall user experience. A few former print designers I know have made this leap successfully. Others become frustrated at how much left-brain stuff is required, and how little time they spend exercising the right brain.

I know this for sure: Newspaper executives (at least in the United States, at ground zero of the business crisis) are in no mood these days to think of visual journalism as a savior. You get attention only when called on to help save money; for example, a redesign to fit narrower webs. The rest of the time, yeah, nice looking page, Jack, but ad revenue and circulation just fell double-digits again, so, like, cut some more costs … oh, gotta run.

Say what you will about Alan. His redesign projects start and finish with return on investment in mind. That’s how he gets executives to listen, and those of you trying to inspire change from the design desk outward would be well advised to observe and learn.

Please don’t get me wrong. Print will not die for many years, if ever. But staking your success on print alone resembles trying to climb to the top of a mountain that slowly sinks into the earth. Less and less room at the top, more casualties at the bottom. Newspaper people happen to be on the least stable ground.

I believe much of the consternation around SND these days just reflects the frustration and vulnerability we all feel trying to ride the mountain. I would love to help, but I can’t do much if the conversation stays focused on “making graphic design important again in the newsroom,” a futile mission I infer from this and other conversations.

Thanks for reading.

–jay

Entrepreneurship is good. Exit strategies are good. Even so, I would hazard a guess that the majority of folks who continue to participate in this site or as members of SND likely will be people who work at these traditional media companies (even more so at the international level). As screwed up and loathed as they may be, they probably are not (in one form or another) going away.

There may indeed come a time to bail. There may come a time where they just send all the friggin’ designers home, in one worldwide memo. But till then, how do reposition, transition?

And, heck, let’s be for real: Whether “production design” gets the shaft or not, companies today, tomorrow and forever will still be hiring companies like Alan’s, Mario Garcia’s or Roger Black’s to re-imagine, reinvent, launch new ventures and so on.

It’s no like the day is coming when There Is No Design. (Though that would be a bitchin’/scary cable show: “After Designers”)

Treble that need for folks like me who’re “lucky” enough to have a mortgage :-D Let alone, kids, student loans, etc.

I know it sounds a little wacky. But who else is going to do it? Who else believes that designers have good ideas about news and information? No one, that’s who. Not the newspaper owners, obviously.

Imagine if the award you got for your awesome project wasn’t just a piece of vellum and a reproduction in the 31st annual, but a stipend, or a guarantee of clerical support, or marketing help.

Would it be difficult? Gods, yes. You’d need an executive director who was tied into venture capital and angel investors, and s/he wouldn’t be cheap. I have no idea what the implications would be for tax status, let alone bylaws. And it’s just plain not easy to get money for anything media-oriented these days; everyone’s scared poopless.

But that’s the sort of SND I’d cheerfully send my $110 to each year, even though I’m out of the business and absolutely cannot afford it. And that’s the sort of contest I’d bust my butt to enter.