Monday 20 September 2010

Roger Black's Ready Made Media Project

Publication designer Roger Black has released a new venture Ready-Media. Ready Media is a collection of pre-existing templates for print and web publications.The service offers already designed magazines in a various styles including city/regional, trade, travel, etc., as well as newspaper and web designs. Clients can choose a variety of fonts online and even see how they'll look in the layouts. The new venture's website states:

"never before has world-class media design been so   available,so accessible, so affordable."


The question is does it cheapen the work of the designer/publisher? Personally I can see why designers are frustrated. Designers such as myself have spent years learning the ins and outs of design. However my argument is, hasn't this been happening for a long time?
With the introduction of Photoshop and InDesign to the public resulted in people designing for themselves. So surely this has been a long time coming. There are already self publishing websites for books which has allowed for numerous authors to launch their careers so surely something like Ready-Made was going to happen eventually. 
Personally I do not have a problem with it. I believe that everyone should be allowed to have a voice and if they wish to self publish a magazine or anything else they should be allowed to. I do not believe that this type of technology cheapens the job of a designer, because I like to think that although anyone can design not everyone can design well.





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