Most design agencies are built on the same hierarchy: you move from a junior, to a mid-weight to a senior.
It looks like a hierarchy of experience but it’s actually a hierarchy of production capability.
A senior has strategic instincts and years of hard-won production skill — they can see the idea and physically produce it. A junior has no strategic voice yet, but useful hands. Somewhere in between is a midweight, picking up speed on the tools while still waiting to be trusted with the thinking..
Problem is, that whole structure only makes sense if production skill is scarce and takes years to earn. That was true for about sixty years. It stopped being true sometime in the last eighteen months, and I don’t think anyone’s actually redesigned the studio to reflect it.
The democratisation of design didn’t just speed up production. It flattened it. The skill gap separating a junior’s first mockup from a senior’s polish has mostly closed. That’s not because juniors got better, it’s because the tools stopped caring how long you’d been using them. So, the ‘thing’ our entire hierarchy measures — years of production skill — isn’t scarce anymore. It’s not a senior advantage. It’s not even a differentiator.
This makes a load of difference.
So what is a studio actually organised by now, if not production skill?
I think future design agencies will be organised by contribution-type, not tenure. A 23-year-old might out-contribute a 15-year veteran when production proficiency is no longer the benchmark.
That raises a question I don’t have the answer to: if “junior,” “midweight” and “senior” are primarily labels for a production-skill ladder, and that ladder just disappeared, what are we actually measuring when we hand out titles? And what should we be calling people, or more importantly, do we need to differentiate?
I don’t know yet. But that’s what I’m thinking about.
Here’s what I do know:
The median age of Australians is currently 38 years. Millennials (born 1981–1996) represent the largest share of the population.
Millennials combined with Gen Z (the emerging designers born 1997-2912) make up 36% of the total retail spend in Australia.
As more Gen Z enter the workforce, their scale of retail spending is projected to skyrocket to 48% by 2030.
Against the assumptions, emerging designers actively want jobs. They are looking for employment and seek to be loyal employees. I know that because that’s what over 50 graduates from our Never Not Creative Never Not Finishing school have said in end-of-program surveys. Similarly, the National Australia Bank research revealed over 85% of Gen Z are actively saving. And Westpac Home Ownership Report found 35% plan to buy their own home.
Gen Z are entering the share market – they’re not yet got many funds but they’re outpacing Baby Boomers in trading platforms like Commsec.
So what
Gen Z are the audience your clients and customers want. It makes sense to employ them. Not as ‘junior’ designers but as emerging designers embraced for their fresh ideas and exuberance. The bliss of ignorance, the lack of baggage. The ‘why can’t it be done?’ attitude.
I also know thinking all young designers will fall under the AI bus is short-sighted and based on ‘old ways’ of working. Irrelevant ways.
What do you think?
What have I missed?
As always, happy to discuss further, just email.
Carol Mackay
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