I think it's beneficial for discussions of this nature to be had and all viewpoints have some merit. Thank you for adding to the discussion Mike.
Found this interesting article regarding photography,
The Death of Photography: Are Camera Phones Destroying an Artform?.
From the article: But what does Olmos mean by saying photography is dying? He argues that in the 1850s the rise of photography made many painters, who had previously made nice livings from painting family portraits, redundant. Now it's the turn of professional photographers to join the scrap heap. "Photographers are getting destroyed by the rise of iPhones. The photographers who used to make £1,000 for a weekend taking wedding pictures are the ones facing the squeeze. Increasingly we don't need photographers – we can do just as well ourselves."
Later he states, "Don't get me wrong. I love iPhones and Instagram," says Olmos. "But what I worry about is that Kodak used to employ 40,000 people in good jobs. What have they been replaced by? Twelve people at Instagram."
It's an interesting article with many similar points to what we discussed here. Calligraphy is, of course, a different trade. But we are all in agreement, in any trade these days, it will be important to constantly keep your focus on the changes in the market and how you present yourself within it in order to stay in business. What shouldn't be underestimated, as well, is the drive of the young entrepreneurial creatives and their ability to use social media to their advantage and how this will affect everyone's business.
It used to be the Yellow Pages was *the* place to put your business ad. People no longer even use phone books. People will search for a calligrapher online but most won't go past page one of google results. Can you guarantee you will be on page one or even two? Highly doubtful. (And I don't mean you specifically, I mean that generally.)
I follow many of the event planning and entrepreneurship workshops on IG. They offer weekend workshops in how to run a business, mostly in the wedding and design industry. They are sold out for every workshop. Their workshops also offer calligraphy classes, including "how to run a calligraphy business" segments. Of course not every one of those people will start a calligraphy business. But they may be able to provide calligraphy "on the side." This takes away a job from a FT calligrapher. Sometimes these small jobs are the bread and butter work of a professional calligrapher.
With a few exceptions, I only follow calligraphers on IG and I only follow the ones who post just calligraphy. And this is just IG, which not all calligraphers are even on IG. I follow 1,450 people. And for every one I follow, there are at least 3 more I haven't followed yet. And they are expanding every day. Of course, not all of these people will start a business. As Mike said, to not be aware of the potential change this creates for our market, would, in my opinion, be very naive.
In terms of that creative robot calligrapher - it does exist. They are called calligraphy fonts. Head on over to creativemarket.com and check out some of the amazing calligraphy fonts being sold for next to nothing. Whether we like it or not, those are calligraphy jobs going out of the market. (And yes, there will always be those clients who will want hand done custom over a font. But there will also be those who may have hired a calligrapher who won't now because they can get "just as good" from a font for next to nothing.)
I like what Elisabeth said earlier, you don't have to wait until the change has already happened before you start having the conversation about how to improve it. Thankfully, yes, the conference and IAMPETH are thriving and growing like crazy (because there are more people learning calligraphy
). But our guild still has the same people. Our guild isn't expanding with the younger crowd because their guilds are FB, IG, and Twitter. Sit in on the "business of calligraphy" roundtable at IAMPETH and then tell me professional calligraphers aren't concerned about the changing market.
Flourish has over 5,000 members and receives over 1,000 visitors each week. What a great platform to encourage quality work and mindfulness of the business environment.