Technology is developing at an incredible pace with marked improvements every year that passes. 

Electric cars can now cover near-on 400 miles (I’m looking at you, Tesla Model S), global 5G is just around the corner and Artificial Intelligence is hopping out of the movies and into reality.

Naturally, design software and all the tech surrounding it in our industry is no different. 

Looking back

The craft a budding graphic designer learns today is very different to what one might have learned in decades past. 

15 years ago I was venturing out as a Junior Designer, struggling with 2GB RAM and Photoshop CS2. The process of designing a website was vastly different to how it is today – a compromise between a Photoshop layout that looked professional and something that could actually be translated into code. 

And then came the dev stage  – predominantly table-based with a scrolling marquee shoehorned in somewhere near the top of the homepage to impress the client, just above an animated GIF blinking away tirelessly.

Moving forwards

Quarkxpress was – for most of my early career – the go-to package for creating brochures or any kind of collateral for that matter. In recent years this has been replaced, almost completely, with InDesign and the rise of Adobe Creative Suite. Quarkxpress and CorelDRAW have since been consigned to many a Trash bin, and experienced designers are left with a whole series of brand new shortcuts to get familiar with.

The days of designing websites in Photoshop, with files made up of huge amounts of layers and smart objects, are over. It’s thankfully been replaced with the freedom, pace and pixel-perfect accuracy offered by Sketch, coupled with software integrations like UXPin or Invision on-hand to mould work into fully functioning prototypes. 

And at Storm we’ve worked to embrace these innovations, not only making a marked effort to keep our hardware and software up-to-date, but also ensuring designers have the knowledge they need and are upskilled where needed.

A bright future for design teams

It’s hard to imagine how things will continue to improve for graphic designers, but the same words were probably batted around in 1987 just before Adobe Illustrator was first released.

That said there has never been a more exciting time to work in design – the innovation and capabilities open to us today are limitless and the improvements in technology and functionality are game-changing. 

As a designer in 2020, now more than ever, it’s important to keep growing, keep evolving and keep up-to-date with the latest software, processes and trends. Don’t blink or you just might be left behind.