Graphic design is very easy now. That’s just what makes it so different and appealing for millennials to post their graphic design work on Pinterest, Behance, and Are.na. The new amateur demographic designers have sometimes acted very disrespectfully toward their Modernist Forefathers online. Apparently, back when graphic design involved a lot of hard work with scalpel, ruler, and glue, there had been something of a gentleman’s agreement to keep things simple. It was a square, circle, triangle (pick one), three-letter acronym, three standard formats, and that’ll have to do, kinda thing. When the unwashed first opened PageMaker and realized that corporate branding was literally a piece of piss, well, the gatekeepers of graphic design’s cultural authority were suddenly nowhere to be seen.

A bloody territorial graphic arms race has ensued. Professional graphic designers resort to arcane medieval tactics, erecting spectacular horror vacui fortresses which they defend with barrages of maximalist, labor-intensive aesthetics, and baroque, proprietary assets. The amateurs, equipped only with their bare wit and 1001 meager free fonts are kept at bay for now. But the anxiety ...It never stops.