I don't know if you've ever known any graphic designers (what we now call 'print designers'), but if you have...you may have noticed how limited they were in the concept department.
What they are very good at is ingesting a current 'look' or trend, and regurgitating it in a way that is pleasing to the eye. For a graphic designer, originality and unusualness are liabilities to be excised, like superfluous fingers. Or at least kept well-concealed.
I can't imagine that designers really set out to destroy their originality. What is more likely is that they don't have much to begin with. If they did, they'd be shunted off to fine arts, or poetry, or even computer programming. The graphic designer's drive is not toward creativity per se, but rather toward mechanical repetition. This is a person who likes to cut-and-paste, draw straight lines with a ruler or graphic-layout program, or show five different ways of putting a pink square and a blue square next to a block of grey text. It is not someone who enjoys challenges and risks: no wild-boar hunting, please, or standup comedy, or Ironman triathlons.
Another characteristic of these folks, doubtless related, is their lack of structural visualization. They can't draw in three dimensions. Ask them to draw faces, and they'll give you childish mugshots. Usually the head-on, sometimes a side view, but never the three-quarters shot that people routinely see in life and movies. I suggest that this two-dimensionality of vision helps make them successful as layout artists.
What they are not any good at is illustration. The annoying Maira Kalman has carved out an huge career for herself as a colorful primitivist, mainly because there aren't too many people using gouache anymore. Back in the 40s and 50s there were (Lucille Corcos, M. Slasek), but those old-time gouache illustrators were precise in their line. They didn't produce stuff that made one think of finger painting. This Kalman illustration below, from the New York Times, is one of the best things she's ever done, but it also shows up all her faults. Usually her excuse is that she isn't trying to draw well, but that doesn't hold up here. It's a nice little drawing of Kitty Carlisle, and Kalman put some work into it. But what happened to the background? Is the floor curved, or what? What's happening with the drinks table? Kalman isn't denying perspective. She just can't do it.
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