Of all the -isms in the world, ageism has gotta be one of the worst. It’s ingrained into our economic models and our cultural mindset. It’s a triple-edged sword—I have benefitted from it, practiced it, and been unceremoniously dumped because of it.
When I started AURAS, competing for jobs meant going against established design firms with older partners in—at least it seemed at the time—fancy downtown offices. But I found clients looking for “some young guy who’ll work cheap,” and I got referrals from older designers who felt some jobs were beneath them. One of my first steady clients hired me because they wouldn’t pay their current designer (and neighbor) an extra two dollars a page to layout their little magazine. The designer referred me, and I was happy to have the work. Forty-three years later, AURAS still produces its publication. And yes, we have raised our page rate.
One cheap client begets another. The publisher referred me to a wealthy colleague who had purchased a deer hunting club and wanted direct mail pieces to promote membership. That’s when I learned about “scope creep.” We met in his lavish top-floor apartment in an exclusive building on upper Connecticut Avenue. I discovered he had no clue what he was doing. He needed a logo designed, mailing pieces produced, promotional tchotchkes made, and a print vendor. I had guessed he acquired a relatively small organization, but his mailing list turned out to have 75,000 names. I’d vastly underbid the job and feebly tried to renegotiate the deal to no avail. But that’s what happens when you are hungry for work and dealing with a wealthy, savvy attorney. I felt like I was twelve.
A few years later, and when I was considerably more competent at estimating costs, AURAS attracted another type of client. Communication directors and association executives were seeking out small studios headed by some wunderkind designer who could not only produce great work at bargain rates but also could earn them credit for finding a rising star. Undoubtedly, my youthful exuberance and confidence—and a growing portfolio of work—helped convince these people that AURAS could be a long-term solution to finding a relationship that could solve their ongoing needs for the design.
In the nineties, AURAS’ success was augmented by our embrace of desktop publishing, allowing our designers unprecedented creative freedom and impressive control over production. But it also allowed a rationalization that was an excuse for ageism: older designers couldn’t adapt. When interviewed, some framed their lack of computer skills in a cloak of contempt for the necessity to stay competitive. They thought designing on a Mac was just a passing fad. That conveniently justified eliminating them as potential employees, regardless of their past performance.
I had several experiences interviewing people I knew from past jobs, people who were work friends and had good portfolios but knew nothing about using a Mac. They got mentally lumped in with parents whose VCRs perpetually blinked “12:00.” It was too easy to conflate their shortcomings with their age, being a decade older than I was.
At the same time, plenty of young designers was confident that they were masters of QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator, and Photoshop. In reality, many were self-taught and often lacked the typographic skills, production speed, and creative throughput needed to work at AURAS. Their portfolios might be promising, but their ability to work in a studio environment where performance was part of the expectation was questionable.
Ageism was always a component of my hiring decisions. I chose younger designers instead of older professionals for rational reasons: their expectations of salary, the cost/benefit of training, and, unfortunately, health insurance rates. We provided full insurance to everyone who needed it, and the premiums were based on the average age of the whole staff. Older employees skewed health insurance costs so drastically that we once calculated that our lower insurance premiums would more than pay for an employee just because they were young.
We did employ older and younger people if we thought they had the potential and the enthusiasm to learn. Some hires turned out great but others were disasters, and the reason rarely correlated to age. One older employee with a great portfolio was incapable of meeting any deadline, another couldn’t adjust to working in an open space, and a few—all younger ones—were incapable of believing there was anything they needed to learn.
By the turn of the millennium, the advantage gained by the early adoption of digital design had almost run its course, but the rise of the Internet created new opportunities. Early web design was tedious, involved specialized skills, and was incapable of print’s typographic and layout aesthetic, and I mostly ignored it. A few intrigued employees, not seeing any movement toward web at the studio, left for positions where their growing web skills could bring them new challenges—and more money. All of them were younger than me.
New studios seized most of the opportunity to capitalize on the Internet. Staffed with young designers uninterested in “flat design” meant to be distributed by “snail mail,” they required skills unrelated to print design. Firmly ensconced in my 40s, I was incapable of seeing any future for things I didn’t care to comprehend. Now it was my metaphorical VCR flashing “12:00.” It took two more decades for the web to become a design medium sophisticated enough to interest me and a pandemic to motivate me to learn the skills of current site design.
And so, it became apparent that my initial ageist advantage of youth, aided by premature salt-and-pepper hair instilling confidence about my competence, had devolved into more conventional ageism. AURAS initially competed as a young upstart against established firms. Now, we were seen as the old firm with stale ideas competing against three generations of new design studios. Landing clientele became more challenging because I was convinced my deep knowledge of design, extensive portfolio of work, decades of experience, and genuine enthusiasm would be enough to clinch the deal.
My white, receding hairline seemed to imply that it wasn’t.
Potential clients have somehow become much younger than me, and they probably make assumptions about my studio’s creative inventiveness. Maybe I have become impatient with the dog-and-pony show needed to get new clients, and we are too comfortable with the work we do now, but we are constantly bidding for further work. The harsh reality is that new clients aren’t looking for a “wunder alte kaker.”
