As I mentioned earlier, every development has its rewards and drawbacks. Innovation can either lead to progression or towards devastation. While social media has numerous benefits for graphic designers, at the same time, overindulgence in social media can prove to be disastrous. Let us take a look at some of the positive and negative aspects of social media for graphic designers.

Social Media as a Savior for Graphic Designers:

1. Quick And Easy Promotion:

It is a known fact that the fastest way to promote something is through social media. With just a simple tweet on twitter, graphic designers are able to share their graphic design world with the entire community.

2. Less Costly – More Effective:

Considering the worst recession that has hit us in decades, the cheapest means of promotion for a graphic designer is social media. While the T.V medium is still considered as mass media, but it can be quite costly for graphic designers to advertise their portfolio through conventional means like the T.V or print media.

3. Connecting With The Design Community:

The graphic design community is well known for its resolute unity and unwavering fraternity. Each graphic designer benefits from other graphic designers. Through social media, graphic designers share their views, assist their mates in their design work and provide feedback to each other. Also, being a part of the graphic design community on social media enables word-of-mouth advertising for graphic designers. Sharing each other’s work spreads the word throughout the design world.

4. Finding Clients And Opportunities:

Social Networking and blogging services have become a popular resource for graphic designers to find potential clients and business opportunities.

5. Create And Build An Identity:

Social Networking provides the ideal identity for a graphic designer to work on. Creating profiles on twitter, Facebook etc gives a unique identity to graphic designers. People get aware of who you are and where they can find you.

6. A Platform For Healthy Discussions:

Social Networking services like twitter and Facebook provide a great podium for graphic designers to come and have healthy design related discussions. This increases creativity through sharing of ideas, views and experience.

Social Media as a Menace for Graphic Designers:

1. Distraction and Diversion:

While social media provides so many benefits for graphic designers, too much involvement leads to waste of graphic designers’ precious time. Sometimes a graphic designer gets trapped in the complex web of social media. One shared link leads a graphic designer to another and then another and so on so forth. Involved in social media, graphic designers often forget their basic work and deviate from their main purpose.

2. Creates Imbalance Between Work And Life:

Excessive social media involvement creates an imbalance between a graphic designer’s work life and personal life. Effective social media requires a graphic designer to dedicate considerable amount of time to social networking. This creates priority issues for a graphic designer who has to fulfill personal duties as well.

3. Spam And Scam:

Social Media unlike other media is the biggest victim of spamming and scams. Every day we are faced with a constant bombardment of spamming from various scam entities which creates confusion and disorientation in the design field. Graphic designers are sometimes confused for spammers and that dents their reputation.

4. Increased Chances Of Plagiarism:

With the advent of social media networking, we have witnessed an increase in design plagiarism cases. Right from the design to the content, material is copied on the blogosphere which is a constants nuisance for authentic graphic designers. This may prove to be fatal for graphic designers when there is little they can do to protect their design work on the web.

5. Need for Continuous Updates and Changes:

To remain popular on the social media, graphic designers are required to continuously update their profiles and portfolios. This can be a cumbersome task for someone who spends most of his day on heavy graphic software. Continuous updates on social networking consume time as well as resources of a graphic designer.

Original Link : http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/sm-graphic-designer-construct-destruct/