Why Artists Are Sitting on a Goldmine
If you're an artistically-inclined person, you probably realized from a very young age that your talent is special.
It's a gift that made your parents proud of you, and your classmates interested in being your friends.
Most people would have also thought that as an adult, your uncanny eye for beauty would automatically translate to a decent source of income.
But now that you're an adult, you may be realizing that this has yet to fully happen -- even though you're indeed special.
Why is that the case? And most importantly, how can you change it? The problem with today's economy is that it favors those who have additional skills that can complement their main skill -- in other words, people who are well-rounded.
And for an artistic person, what are those complementary useful skills, you ask? You may be shocked when I tell you they're nothing other than programming.
Yes, programming.
Let me explain.
In a typical web-development shop, what you find is programmers (they are actually called 'themers' if they specialize in designing web templates, because templates are known as 'themes' and the specialty itself is known as 'theming').
So, because they are run by programmers, most 'theming' shops, surprisingly, lack the aesthetic abilities which are integral to any theming project.
To solve this problem, themers hire a creative lead or a graphics designer to provide the aesthetics for them on top of the functionality that they build.
This unfortunately does not solve the themer's problem entirely.
For the graphics to nicely integrate with the programming code underneath, the creative lead has to also understand a little bit of programming (i.
e.
theming) too.
For example, to understand why she's free to have top-to-bottom gradients in one section of a theme, but must completely avoid these gradients in another section.
This is where the idea of training graphics designers to become themers came to life.
Programming is a learned skill, but art is a talent.
Programmers are nerds -- at least, I am -- who simply can't just pick up the talent of graphics design.
But artists can acquire the skill of theming.
And those artists who choose to invest in themselves and train to acquire this additional skill ultimately set themselves apart from the rest.
They become highly skilled and in high demand.
It's a gift that made your parents proud of you, and your classmates interested in being your friends.
Most people would have also thought that as an adult, your uncanny eye for beauty would automatically translate to a decent source of income.
But now that you're an adult, you may be realizing that this has yet to fully happen -- even though you're indeed special.
Why is that the case? And most importantly, how can you change it? The problem with today's economy is that it favors those who have additional skills that can complement their main skill -- in other words, people who are well-rounded.
And for an artistic person, what are those complementary useful skills, you ask? You may be shocked when I tell you they're nothing other than programming.
Yes, programming.
Let me explain.
In a typical web-development shop, what you find is programmers (they are actually called 'themers' if they specialize in designing web templates, because templates are known as 'themes' and the specialty itself is known as 'theming').
So, because they are run by programmers, most 'theming' shops, surprisingly, lack the aesthetic abilities which are integral to any theming project.
To solve this problem, themers hire a creative lead or a graphics designer to provide the aesthetics for them on top of the functionality that they build.
This unfortunately does not solve the themer's problem entirely.
For the graphics to nicely integrate with the programming code underneath, the creative lead has to also understand a little bit of programming (i.
e.
theming) too.
For example, to understand why she's free to have top-to-bottom gradients in one section of a theme, but must completely avoid these gradients in another section.
This is where the idea of training graphics designers to become themers came to life.
Programming is a learned skill, but art is a talent.
Programmers are nerds -- at least, I am -- who simply can't just pick up the talent of graphics design.
But artists can acquire the skill of theming.
And those artists who choose to invest in themselves and train to acquire this additional skill ultimately set themselves apart from the rest.
They become highly skilled and in high demand.
Source...