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Feature: Vic Jones Discusses Burnout, Exploitation in Graphic Design Work

Tom Jakob | 9/30/23

Finding the momentum to keep creating art in a world that constantly challenges our idea of self and worth is a near-daily struggle for all artists. The places our minds can be taken by things such as burnout and a divisive media ecosystem are innumerable and sometimes downright terrifying. For our October issue, Art Grove Newsletter sat down with Visual artist Vic Jones, who has a lot to say about a host of problems for artists working in the age of social commodification, predatory capitalism, and competition at the expense of progress.

Though originally from New York, Vic attended the University of Maine in Bangor for two years.

“I was undecided for my major and they put me in a drawing class with a sketchbook, and we’d just go super hard on that thing,” Vic said.

Like many of us, it was the comments of a mentor, her professor at the time, that unlocked Vic’s dreams.

“Halfway through the semester we would discuss our drawings in the sketchbook,” Vic said. “And my teacher was like, ‘you're really good at this. Have you thought of majoring in art?’”

She hadn’t until then, but immediately got to work and soon after enrolled in the University’s art program. However, due to a mixture of burnout and the financial burden of tuition, Vic dropped out of the program. After taking about a year off entirely, Vic saw an opportunity in Eastern Maine Community College’s graphic design program. In her summation, it was a smart, if not also challenging decision to make.

“Getting a degree in studio art would have been all-encompassing for what I needed, because they do classes, like printmaking, which I would have liked to explore a bit of, but also I don't feel super down and out for not doing so,” Vic said. “In terms of graphic design, I would say that the degree definitely helps because it got me hooked up with a job when I first got out.”

As Vic puts it, graphic design is one of those disciplines that many people perceive as “all-technical.” Indeed, the colloquial meme of “graphic design is my passion” captures just how far the essential practice has been outsourced to folks with no training whatsoever, all so that a company doesn’t have to pay for another worker’s salary. And this is the first step into the many problems in her field that Vic underscores. She will be the first to tell you that there exists a definite side to graphic design which requires “some skill and artistry to do it,” and the dilution of the practice’s required skills comes with a detriment to working artists.

“I would say for logo creation––stuff like that––it's not just adding fun shapes or whatever,” Vic said. “So I think that the studio art definitely helped in terms of graphic design, but I guess not as much as you'd think it would. [...] Everything's just kind of recycled at this point. It's kind of hard to come up with something that's completely original because there's someone else who has done it already and put it out there in the world.”

Vic reverberates an important condition in the contract that humanity has with the forces of nature that compel us to creativity. Sometimes it can be difficult to believe there is a compelling enough reason behind doing anything creative at all. That feeling gets especially heightened when others appear to be doing just fine. And the more often we force ourselves through those periods, especially in pursuit of a paycheck, the more often burnout arises.

“Our world now is like everyone's pushing stuff out, you know, like, ‘create, create, create, create!’” Vic said. “I'm still trying to get over burnout.”

Burnout is a word that has been popping up more often in the news and on social media posts in the past few years. It truly began to become a buzzword in the work-life mania of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as in the midst of the rising labor movement of the past decade or so. But it is a concept we are still fairly new to in the sense of scholarly discussion and setting definitional parameters. Understanding just how deep the problem of burnout goes, and especially how deep the problem goes specifically for creatives, is somewhat difficult to answer. But we do have some context clues.

In 2022, TBWA International released a study that, among other things, found 63% of creatives strongly agree it is important for their employer to help achieve a healthy work-life balance, whereas only 44% of the general population sample believed the same. Additionally, that study found creatives to be twice as likely than the global benchmark to say things such as bureaucracy, day-to-day schedules, excessive task management, and commutes degrade their work experience.

This is certainly something Vic has dealt with in her artistic journey, much of which has come from the hands of exploitative business practices. When asked, Vic said exploitation is one of the biggest issues in the arts today and it takes on many forms. One of the most pernicious of those forms is gatekeeping due to educational standards. When working in some of her first graphic design jobs, Vic often found herself thinking “I'm eating my shit right now, and then I’ll get out of that job,” only to get out “and I still can't even find anything because they're like, ‘Oh, you need a bachelor's degree.’”

Graphic designers are an especially exploited sector of the creative labor force. In 2022, the median pay of graphic designers in America was just under $60,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But for art and design workers, the median pay was $51,150, which is only about $5,000 more than the median pay for all American workers.

Vic is one of those exploited graphic designers too, who said that as a result of being overloaded with projects she “lost sight of drawing to enjoy it or just designing stuff for fun.”

“I used to work at a print shop and when you design something and see it printed out for the first time you're just like, ‘Oh my god, this is so cool. Like I made that,’” Vic said. “But then it gets to the point where there's so much getting pushed at you that you can't really give your all to every project. So then the stuff you're making isn't what you want it to be.”

Social media is something that Vic sees as having a “toxic” effect on artists “because if when you post things and you expect to get likes and you don't get that feedback that you're expecting, then you feel like ‘well, why is my art not good enough to get the likes?’”

The obvious purpose of art is to evoke a response of any kind. However, social media tends to exacerbate the fears artists typically have, especially that of exposure. And if it feels like nobody at all is seeing your work—especially when that gatekeeping is coming from the impersonal and invisible force of an algorithm—it’s hard not to become burnt out and jealous of others. But the real problem at hand, at least as Vic sees it, is that many artists see likes and follows as the only meaningful metric of exposure. There is no denying that in its current state, social media comes with a few costs for artists, one of them being divisiveness and jealousy.

“I have friends that are artists, and sometimes they'll show me their things. And it's inspiring, but I guess on the other side of it, there's also a bit of jealousy,” Vic said. “I’ll often think ‘oh, you're in a space where you can create and I want that so badly.’”

When Vic speaks to this topic, she speaks with a noticeable passion that demonstrates the degree to which she is both affected by and seeks to affect the problem of social media’s detriment to the arts industry. Thus finding ways to use her creativity without placing all of its reason for existing on social media is not only how Vic has been able to work through burnout and creative block, it’s a form of protest against exploitation too.

When asked, Vic says the most important thing she wishes she had learned sooner is “not to be so hard on myself.” This is a lesson we artists seem to relearn every day, so finding ways to uncritically practice our art ought to be the best way to dig ourselves out of a creative hole. And Vic has indeed found great success in “trying to make art to not post.”

“I used to create art just in terms of ‘Is this good enough for me to post on social media?’” Vic said. “Now I'm getting to the point where I'm like, ‘I'm gonna draw this and there's nothing special about it. If I posted it, I mean, it doesn't matter if it gets likes or not. I'm doing this for my own enjoyment.’”

It could seem quite ironic to recommend supporting Vic on Instagram, given the nature of this story. But Art Grove has a firm stance of supporting the artists we feature and social media should not be sniffed at, because its potential to change an artist’s life is no small matter. As it goes, there is no such thing as a bad tool, just a bad user.

So, be sure to follow @notoriousvdesigns to see the designs she has made during her journey out of burnout, coming soon.

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