One of the hardest challenges for a graphic designer in this region is to establish trust in his or her profession.

I have witnessed cases in which clients gave the design agency’s work to a second company to have them continue working on it simultaneously. I have witnessed clients asking for the files of their new Corporate Design, to allow them to “change a few things here and there” themselves. I have witnessed clients telling graphic designers which layout of an existing website they are supposed to copy and what exactly the navigation should look like.

Part of the problem is that with the wide-spread access to computers everyone can handle graphic software after a relatively short period of training. No need anymore to hire a specialist, some people may think. It is a problem that designers all over the world face and are aware of. One step to convince clients of a designer’s added value has been to invent new forms or to recycle traditional skills other than the ones provided by a computer: Photography, illustration, drawing, spraying, cutting and so on.

Advertisement in a coffee bar in Amman

Another countermeasure taken by designers was to focus on conceptual work, on ideas, and on consulting. At our company we try hard to come up with new ideas, we discuss the impact of our work on the audience, we give intellectual input to enable our clients to reach their goals. That’s part of what we’re payed for: to translate a client’s objective into a visual and verbal language that talks adequately to the respective audience.

But in many cases we are asked to simply translate the client’s objective to the computer, without thinking, without asking questions. There’s nothing less satisfying than being a tool for someone else. Sometimes I reach a point where I ask: do clients actually pay us for handling a computer? Why do they refuse to profit from our intellectual skills?

According to what I hear or read, eying our profession suspiciously is a universal problem, but I feel that in this part of the world clients or people in general doubt our skills even more than elsewhere. So, looking at the market that we as a company work for (which is Jordan and the Gulf states), what are the reasons for the particular distrust towards graphic designers in this region?

People rather rely on themselves than on experts
There is a fear of losing power, which has to do with the way some of the societies in this part of the world are organized. People mistrust their institutions where they are forced to look after themselves, in states where social security is provided by the family rather than the state. People are responsible for their own well-being, and that’s why they are afraid to lose control over the things that they are responsible for. In case of a marketing manager that could be the design of the annual report, the corporate website, or the rebranding of the company. That’s why many clients are reluctant to take the leap of faith that eventually is required in every graphic design project.

High quality work is the exception
And there is a second reason why in the Middle East, or at least in Jordan, people mistrust virtually any profession: because customers are aware of the generally low standards. The lack of quality work has to do with the reason why lots of people do the job they do: Because they have to (for financial reasons), and/or because they are born into it (the son takes over his father’s business, for example). Besides, people are often not sufficiently trained and educated.

So sometimes there’s little passion and know-how in what people do, and consequently quality suffers. Companies frequently don’t pay attention to detail, customer service for many is a foreign concept, and many lack basic skills (I just wanted to buy some beef at the local supermarket, and the butcher seriously tried to sell me lamb under the label “beef” — although even the real label on the packaging said “lamb”, and even I can tell the difference between lamb and beef just by looking at it). The more surprising it is that most of the Middle Eastern societies waste half of the potential by forcing women to stay at home or depriving them of a decent education. But there’s hope. Quality will gradually rise, as companies are increasingly under public scrutiny. The companies who don’t listen to their stakeholders will fail, the ones who listen will succeed.

Lots of low-level graphic design
Graphic design faces a particular challenge: It can be seen. And people increasingly understand that the level of graphic design in this region is low, lower than in Europe, for example (though there are exceptions). The more they are exposed to media from other parts of the world, they sense that the majority of their own graphic designers drags behind. But as there is little competition on the local (jordanian) market, they don’t really have a choice (and contracting design companies from the occident is too expensive, and there’s too much distance between the two, both culturally and in terms of flight miles). Add to that the fact that Jordan and the gulf states only turned to modern consumer societies recently and that in this region graphic design is a relatively new realm, and we understand better why graphic design is so much undervalued.