The Graphic Design landscape is changing, just like many others affected by AI and free cookie-cutter design tools. Just like the "everyone is a DJ now" phenomenon, this kind of thing appears to be happening in the graphic design space. Event organizers are taking it upon themselves to do their own promotional materials instead of hiring local or remote designers. This unfortunately has taken away opportunities from skilled graphic designers, and it feels like we have been entirely devalued.

While this announcement may appear to be insignificant to most, it's pretty disappointing to feel like I need to make it. I could have just as easily said nothing and deleted the page and removed mentions on my social media, but I felt like I wanted the reasoning behind it to be understood by others. While this decision is not affecting me financially, I have lost a lot of time practicing my skills and attempting to learn new ones just to be unutilized by others.

Started from the bottom...

Symbiotikat Designs started a few years ago as the wittily named "Skeleton Prints," a pun based off my former DJ name and branding. I offered logo and flyer design in addition to other small graphics for things such as Twitch Banners, Static Overlays, etc. for a modest fee.

While the Twitch graphics were probably not well advertised since I only had done my own, I have been working on event flyers for a couple QXT's Nightclub events pretty much exclusively in addition to the monthly calendar printout. I was somewhat nonchalantly placing my logo on the flyers in the hopes someone would find the website, see the designs, and be inspired to hire me for a non QXT's event design. I took pride in what I created to promote events. Sometimes it was a simple digitally painted cosmic backdrop or 90s "Jazz" inspired art and other times it was a fully 3D rendered scene depicting a whole story. I was told that was a bit much, so I scaled back on that a bit, although I really loved the journey of re-learning Blender to make the following image, which actually took on a couple different forms before settling on the final.

After the rebrand to Symbiotikat I was kind of at a loss for what to call the new design service under that moniker. Slapping "Designs" after the name was the quickest thing I could think of. Not as catchy or witty as "Skeleton Prints," but it got the job done. I also managed to incorporate the pride flag in the logo which doubled as a way to show that I am a queer designer and would be more than happy working on an LBGTQIA+ promotion and also as an attention-getter for the watermark. However, branding isn't enough to get you business. It's skill, word of mouth, and confidence from past clients that leads to future ones.

Unfortunately that never came and I've lost hope that people would find me and like my work enough to hire me. I will continue to work on the QXTs designs and publications as long as they want me to while I am still requested, but that will be the extent of my graphics work henceforth.

...Still at the bottom.

Free design services such as Canva and AI services with image generation are making graphic design freely accessible to people with templates that require no time, cooperation with another designer, or design skills to churn out a flyer or logo. Canva is also integrating AI for logo designs and gobbled up Affinity by Serif which also is now free to everyone.

The large language models out there that generate flyers such as ChatGPT and Grok can do a month's work in seconds. The results, however, look strange and uncanny with the obvious AI slop errors and weird and inconsistent and distracting typography. AI flyers have understandably received a lot of pushback from potential eventgoers. Memes are passing around Facebook that they would rather go to an event with a flyer made with crayons over one promoted with a fully AI-generated flyer.

But unfortunately there appears to be no desire to work with other people who have taken the time to learn their skills through classes, self education, and practice time. I am unsure why I in particular have not received any business proposals from anybody since my work has been put out there, but I can only assume it's that I'm simply not good enough despite my efforts.

What's Next

Due to the lack of demand, I have decided to refocus and will no longer be offering graphic design services. Where will I go from here? After years of wanting an interchangeable lens camera I finally bought a used Canon R6 mk2 without about 4,000 shutter actuations and RF 50mm f1.8 lens a couple months ago and will be focusing more on that as a creative outlet and potential occupation. People seem to enjoy my output from that much more. I've photographed a handful of events at QXT's Nightclub as well as personal family events and a recent Lunar Faire.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I wish you well. Going forward, if you are looking for event flyers from a real human designer I high recommend the Philadelphia-based Mike Saga.

I'd like to leave you with some of my favorite designs that I've done.