Art is something that hangs on the wall and gets more expensive

[Whoop]

OK, as my title says, many people's attitude to visual art is that it is an investment but they don't have a clue as to what constitutes quality. It is mainly a consensus of what the galleries say is expensive. So there ends the fine art world.

When it comes to music people are still almost prepared to pay for their art. Mainly because there is a culture of the music business holding hard onto their assets. Yet they are finding that they cannot sustain this position any longer and micro-payment systems and pay-per-track downloads are winning the game.

I am sick and tired of my clients stealing my work for their future projects, without a please or thank you, thinking it is their right that because they screwed me to do an illustration for a job once in the past for no money they now own my copyright, my ass and anything else they can think of. If I complain I get no more work from them. I am royally shafted up the chuftah so hard, it's pushing my teeth out.

So I am seriously turning my back on the whole design scene right now. I cannot make an honest buck anymore.

It is depressing beyond belief, but the notion of copyright today is a joke. Unless of course you are Getty Images, who are making more money today through suing people for copyright infringement than they are from selling their stale and overpriced images.

[imaginr]

Welcome to the real world of today's society ...

[Whoop]

Welcome to the real world of today's society ...

Design is undervalued now, to the point of extinction. Do it for recreation, but otherwise design is not something of any commercial value.

Unless maybe it is industrial design.

Jony Ive gets it right for Apple, but he is as good a technician as he is designer. He knows materials and their capabilities.

Braun had Dieter Rams. He also designed great products with great design. The value he added to the products he designed was respected and it produced iconic design.

If the marketing boys and the big-shots continually shaft the designers, we live in a poorer society.

[Burnart]

I sure sense your frustration. Funny (but not in a good way) how the higher up some people go in an industry they can always find reasons for reducing everyone doing the grunt works terms and conditions while striving to increase their own.

There is a story from when Disney bought Pixar. John Lasseter is reputed to have taken all the creative heads of departments out to dinner and told them "If you can't draw you don't belong here." As a result a great number sought alternate employment. So the story goes.

We need a few more people across the whole spectrum of the arts industries with an emphasis on encouraging creativity rather than squashing it. Fair practice in pay and use of work is certainly a part of that.