I came upon an excerpt about the poster artist Emek from the documentary American Artifact directed by Merle Becker.
The movie is about the history of American rock poster art, from its beginnings in the 1960s, but focusing primarily on the resurgence of the 'art' side of posters that has been becoming very popular in recent years. Emek talks about how he can express his own ideas and views on events/topics in popular culture subliminally into his posters to make them even more meaningful. He portrays himself as a very intelligent designer, seeking out an abstract way to explain a message from a song or event, and then wrapping it up in some of the most detailed, precise work in the industry. For graphic artists like Emek, people flock to his events to get a chance to get their hands on his artwork.
Art Chantry talks about how graphic design is a language. "It's a language that everybody speaks but nobody knows they speak it. And graphic designers are masters of that language form. We're the ones who use this language to change the way you think about something... When we pick yellow, yellow means something... a ratty line instead of a straight line, that means something... round versus square, it means something. And we use all this stuff to convince the viewer to go to the show" (American Artifact).
I also found an article titled 5 Unfair Assumptions Clients Make About Graphic Artists by Millionaire Hoy that talks about how graphic designers feel like their clients don't realize that their job is harder than it looks.
He lists five different common assumptions he has witnessed during his time as a graphic artist:
1) Designing on the computer is easy
2) Graphic designers can do anything
3) They're the only client
4) Graphic designers can read minds
5) Graphic designers assume all responsibility
He goes into more depth as to what these mean, but they're pretty self-explanatory. There's no magic 'design' button that designers can press and just pop out the perfect logo/poster/website/whatever the person wants. There has to be a lot of detailed communication between the artist and the client so that every little subliminal message, every color, every line, every shape, etc correlate to the message the client is trying to convey. Designers can't automatically know what the client envisions in their head without a lot of communication. Also, designers are (ideally) never working on just one project. They're working on several at the same time, but they have to appear as though all their attention and focus is on that client's project.
Hopefully this post portrayed some of how people portray graphic designers. Clients usually assume that the job will be done exactly how they want it to, which is possible, but only when there is strong communication, a realization that there are limits to what can be achieved in the specified time frame, and realizing that there are multiple projects being balanced at the same time.
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