Starting its 50th year of publishing, Graphic Design USA magazine is celebrating the past, present and future of the graphic design community with an all-industry survey.
"We thought long and hard about how best to use our 50th anniversary as an opportunity honor this talented community," commented Gordon Kaye, Editor of Graphic Design USA. "We decided that best way to celebrate is to ask readers about their views on some provocative and fun topics because, quite frankly, they know more than we do and we enjoy hearing from them."
The survey has already been sent to nearly 50,000 graphics professionals in mid-December. Questions run the gamut from favorite identity programs, packages, magazine and album covers, annual and corporate reports, websites and apps, and other design projects; the revolution in tools and technologies; the clash and complement of print and online media; design education and career issues; the changing role of inhouse design; and what the next 50 years of graphic design may look like.
In each 2013 print edition of GDUSA this year, the magazine will present the results of a portion of the survey. This first segment - which will appear in the January-February GDUSA magazine - reports on, among other things, the most influential graphic designers of the past 50 years and the most influential graphic design firms.
"We get it: design talent is diverse, individualistic, nuanced, incapable of being quantified or ranked - that literally thousands of designers have made meaningful contributions to the discipline over the past half century - and that the growing democratization of design is making the "star" system increasingly outdated," Kaye said. "Knowing all this, we still think you'll find the lists that follow fun, informative, thought-provoking, and a snapshot of what people are thinking at this moment."