Decorate our Whare

The Tukutuku panels are used to tell a story and to decorate the Whare. By sending us your Tukutuku panel you are telling us your design story and adding aesthetic beauty to the interior of the For the Masses meeting house.

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forthemasses: design site or recruitment portal?

Wow, this place is a fast moving job site of late, how many jobs posted these last few weeks!
Boom times for the web or what?
I reckon its great, now we just need more young people deciding to become interactive/web designers. Theres a serious shortage at the moment.
Web design became really uncool after the bubble burst, are we seeing a renaissance?
We started re-embracing the term "web designer" a little less than a year ago.
Time for the masses to do the same I reckon.
say it with me: "I'M A WEB DESIGNER AND I'M PROUD"

We've had over 30 jobs posted in the last 2 months, which James and I agreeded over lunch yesterday was amazing. When we first launched jobs we thought, if lucky, we'd get 1 or 2 posts a month max, I've had to scramble around in the backend just to handle the increase.

Is it a renaissance, another bubble, skill shortage, maturity of the media and how integrated it's become in lives of ordinary people, a lot of intermediates going on their OEs or senior people moving into other areas (as BAs, programmers, project managers, etc) with the skills they've picked up during those "dark ages"?
Who knows, I suspect it's all of those things.

Maybe it's me, but I've never really thought of young designers being that interested about being a "web designer" because of the "design" limitations (typography being the major one) that apparently hold us all back. I suspect motion graphics is where it's at for the kids these days.

As an interaction designer and a manager my observations are:

* This level of activity is pretty normal for this time of year - then everything usually slows down from Jan to March. Will be interesting to see if the trend is buckled.

* Employers are not having trouble finding people - but finding the RIGHT people with the RIGHT attitude, skills and experience (note: For Grad designers it's mostly about base skills and attitude).

* And yes, I think you're right - more experienced designers (such as myself) are increasingly moving into leadership or management roles - which is creating opportunities for new blood - a sign that the industry is maturing.

* And finally, there's still heaps of 1st and 2nd generation websites, intranets and software out there - many organisations and companies are playing catch-up or risk being left in the dust.

Rock on and let's all visualise an awesome 2007 for our industry and careers!

Finding experienced talented people is hard. There are plenty of design grads, but few outstanding ones. Luckily the kinds of responses we get through this site are of a much higher standard overall than other job sites.