Showing posts with label Roger Black. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roger Black. Show all posts

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.