Recently there was an article in Print magazine on what tomorrow’s designers need to know to be competitive. The author’s argument was that designers will need to master multiple formats if they want to remain relevant. One part stuck out in particular;
“Design teams of the future will need more people who understand every aspect of making digital products. In short, good digital product design will require a complete understand ing of the process from beginning to end, just as designers now understand it in the print and marketing world.”
In my own experience, I saw the beginning stages of this when applying for jobs a few years back. Having just graduated from a portfolio program, many of the open positions I found seemed to look for people with multiple skill sets; designers who could write, writers who could code, etc. Can we still rely on specialists with a modicum of skills? Or will the future demand that everyone understand the design process from cradle to grave?