A new age for graphic artists?

[abnegation]

Well I've been having a chat with a friend of mine who also happens to be a graphic artist and our topic got me thinking.
Are tags fading away? The fad of picking a render and slapping on C4D's trying to create "flow" around the focal then adding your adjustment layers, in my opinion, is dying. The use of renders in tags isn't as gripping anymore, the new way to go seems to be photomanipulation tags or basically, smaller LP's. Icons will forever be icons, the styles may change but the concept of an icon -in my opinoin- won't need to differ from what it is now.
An example of what I mean would be the image I'm currently using in my signature.
What do you feel is happening to graphics now? Is it evolving? Or is everyone just realising that tags aren't what the world of graphic design is looking for?
Discuss

 

[Pandamore]

I think C4Ds are being used in a less cluttered way, or just using a bigger canvas then shrinking it. When I first got into graphics, it was all about C4Ds and displacements, add a nice text, then done.

 

[Dukey]

With LJ becoming an ever growing presence in the graphics world, it is having some impact on the aesthetics of tags. People who've made icons and then decide they want to expand a bit, their horizons and dimentions xD;
But then people who made tags with c4d's and what not, they're evolving as artists too.
Trying to join clans on major graphics sites such as Planet Renders etc, their art has to be top quality to be getting into them, and therefore throwing on some c4d's and layer adjustments just isn't enough anymore.
It's all in the eye of the beholder really, I guess the beholders are changing :/

 

[Jesus oƒ Suburbia]

Those 400 by 120 dimension settings have been neglected.
People don't limit their work anymore at all, it's about what they can do with what they're provided with.
Take Fringe or PR for example.

"Or is everyone just realising that tags aren't what the world of graphic design is looking for?"

You're right about that; people make things that can actually be used nowadays, book covers, posters, web pages, T-shirt designs, billboards, album art, framed LP's.
Tags are like practice for the big stuff imo.
They only fit in signatures..don't they now?

 

[abnegation]

LJ is actually influencing others to go off and make their own little sites hosting their graphic talent as well as their web design skills. It's becoming increasingly popular and to be honest, has influenced me in many ways in both graphic design and in my coding. From what I've seen it's just a branch off blogging sites, they tend to have a lot of resources and stuff like that in both grahics and CSS or HTML.
The way it's going, and from the talent I've seen, people are going to need to become good at graphic design as well as knowing how to code well if they wish to get into graphic design on the net, I mean, people wont want to hire two people to build a website for them, I knink there's a lot more money in it if you know both.
But yeah, I think it's only striking forums lately, whereas the graphics world is changing, people who visit forums such as PC and mainly see the style there are taking some time to adapt.
People are just getting better, more dynamic and the world of graphics is becoming more competitive. Abstract tags being something very popular too, things made from scratch. It's a good thing though, it goes to show how much more popular the world of graphics has become.
Tags are a forum built phase whereas the icon was started by LJ(?) so it goes to show how much influence these things have on the graphics community all over.
It'll be interesting to see how stuff goes on PC though, it'll probably stick to the typical tags we see in SOTW and such. It'll be hard to keep up with the work I've been seeing around the graphic communities which tend to all affiliate with eachother.

 

[Pandamore]

I think competitiveness helps people push alot forward too, which makes Graphic Teams/Graphic Battles so popular. Did PC ever do this stuff? or....

 

[Jesus oƒ Suburbia]

We did do that; but no one's had a gfx battle since ages.
Competitive nature, is pretty much a big thing in motivating artists.

Oh and as to what Gavin said; if you noticed, pretty much every organised artist host their complete portfolio on the net. They do sometimes code it themselves.
It's a pretty good way to grab attention.

 

[Dukey]

I had tried to start up the graphics battle & collab club again, but then I think I went away for the month and couldn't really keep it active.

Also, more people (including myself) are realising that the world of graphic design doesn't need graphics like the typical SOTW tag, they need website headers, backgrounds and textures etc.
Website design is practically the trunk of the current graphics tree, with how important it's becoming to companies.
People are making their graphics more suitable to that kind of an environment I guess.

 

[Kavii]

Tags, icons, signature images, and other graphics related to user customization within online communities is only a tiny tiny TINY part of the graphic design world and scope.

If you move out into the full world of 'graphic design', you realize that it includes things like: desktop publishing (a fullsize full bleed color wall-sized calendar), for-the-web publishing (banners, graphical layouts, graphical user interfaces, clip art), billboards, packaging for pretty much anything, and more.

The world of graphic design, quite frankly, is NOT simply looking for someone who can just make good forum tags or icons and it is also not just about C4Ds, adjustment layers, and whatever else.

This isn't to say that there aren't people/groups looking for people to specialize in these areas, but on a whole, the scope of graphic design as a field and the scope of a graphic designer is much much bigger than just the world of forum tags and avatars.

Also, there's a difference between simply slapping together pre-done renders and actually doing the renders yourself.

So, my answer to your question on whether or not the world of graphic design is changing or not is: Sure it is!

But not quite in the way that people might think.

The trend in the style of forum tags and avatars/icons tends to come and go with whatever's 'cool' in popular culture and not so much as actual changes in the graphic design world on a whole itself.

The uber-small font usage in graphic design, for example, is mostly popular in forum-based communities and on fan-based websites. It is otherwise for the most part frowned upon in more mainstream graphic design because it is inaccessible (getting too small to read) and very feeling-specific. Especially for web design, super small fonts is most certainly frowned on on more commerialized sites.