Alarming Stats of Pakistan’s Graphics Designing Industry

A logo design contest was conducted by QPro with the name of “Idea Logo Ka” in October 2019. QPro (http://www.qpro.pk) is the largest community of Pakistani freelancers, designers, software developers, and IT professionals. Their Moto is QPRO A PLACE TO MEET WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE.

In order to evaluate the home country’s design industry the contest was held with the name of “Idea Logo Ka”. The panel of the honorable judges included; Awais Kazmi (VentureDive), Mr. Zulqarnain Ansari (ExpertsDesk), Mr. Kashif Nadeem (RichCandies), and Ayesha Mohammad (QPro Pakistan). They are all highly experienced and well-known professionals in the industry of graphics designing in Pakistan.

The contest conduct details were:

• Registration Started on 25thSep, 2019
• Registration Closed on 07thOct, 2019
• Submission Closed on 11thOct, 2019
• Results were announced on 19thOct, 2019

Regardless of the statistics about the quality and creativity of the contestants, which we’re going to elaborate in a while, the contest itself sound the alarm bell about many drastic facts about the ‘capabilities’ of our graphics designers. Among others, there was found a serious lack in the 4 major traits in personality and professionalism which are deemed as a must for a quality graphics designer to compete in the International market. Those traits are Skillset Level, Work Quality, Creativity, and Mindset.

In Pakistan, graphics designing is perhaps considered as the no-brainer and as the simplest money-making tool such that 40% of Pakistani freelancers have chosen this profession. This looks like everybody’s game whereas the quality seems to have hit the rock bottom. As a matter of fact, while contributing 9% in the world’s freelancer community Pakistan could hardly manage to make 1 billion USD per annum, compared to 400 billion USD per annum by our neighbor with as much as 24% contribution on their part. It’s not about the magnitude of the contribution to the overall freelancer community but it’s about the proportion. If they could earn 400 billion with only as large as three times of our contribution, then why couldn’t we make even 50 billion USD at least? Proportionally this is still way behind what it should have been, but it could have been fairly big enough to get us rid of the foreign debts, for instance. So ‘that’ is the point for us to worry about.

Statistical Data from Logo Design Contest

Here are the stats received from the contest. Contest audience was chosen taking into account three parameters; Age group, Demography and Skillset. The figure below depicts the numbers. The point to be noted is that a considerably large proportion of professionals (68%) participated in the contest. Also the age range was carefully chosen such that the participants, at large, were supposed to constitute the most enthusiastic, passionate and diligent among the rest.

A common level of knowledge about your profession has a significant importance in the course of your career path. As you can see from the status shown below; out of 200 contestants more than 100 did not even know what is Portfolio.

Let’s move on to see the results of the contest. It was figured out that 70% of the submitted logos were copied with little tweaks. To your surprise, only 5% were actually looked designed from scratch with personal efforts. Even if we ignore the quality of work for now the situation looks to be the worst. Not a single logo could be evaluated as a 5-star rated even when judges ignored plenty of mistakes – keep in mind we are thinking to compete the global market on this niche.

Reason behind these stats

After having careful judgment of the result outcomes it was figured out that “Low-level Skillset” is the root cause and this low-level skillset is achieved through building a mindset with a constant ‘hard work’ on developing following habbits:

• We’re already a domain expert so do not try to teach us because we know everything better than you.
• Earning is more important than learning.
• Looking for shortcuts instead of learning through practice. Copy/paste is the best and the quickest solution.
• Running after trends, not the aptitude and interest.
• Lack of professionalism and commitment.
• Create comfort zone and remain in it.
• Looking for low-paying jobs and do not want to improve in skills.
  

Time to change our mindset

Wealth of resources and financial strength may bring about progress and well-being for the time being but they do not guarantee log-term and sustainable growth and prosperity unless there’s no fundamental change in the mindset of the people at large. People’s mindset is developed before the nation develops itself and of course, this is a gradual process. Therefore, we have to re-think in the realm of freelancing (and others). We should ask following questions to ourselves:

• Where we will stand in the next 4 years?
• How do we survive in the International market?
• How will we break through to move to highly paying skills?
• What would be the future of Pakistani Design Industry?
• How can we enable our community to generate more revenue for Pakistan?

The change is constant and inevitable. The world is rapidly changing in all walks of life and we have to embrace the change. We have to be serious and honest to ourselves in finding the answers to these questions or otherwise we should get ready for the negative impacts our economy will have to face:

• Continued decline in skills and professionalism even if we are blessed with lots of talent.
• Hard to make the global outreach and compete the market.
• Will only be able to hunt beginner-level jobs.
• Would not be able to generate good revenue for the country.
  

It’s all about Quality

A conclusion can be safely drawn that the measure of quality of work of our freelancers is far cry from the measure of their contribution to the freelance community in the world. Quality is achieved at a cost. The cost will have to be incurred in the form of time and efforts – the efforts in the right direction with clear objectives in mind. If we want to make our mark in the global IT and freelancing market we have to improve our skillset to provide quality service. There’s no doubt that our country is blessed with immense talent and passion to do wonders for it. Albeit there’s a dire need to capitalize this talent by grooming and guiding them towards the right direction. QPro has courageously taken the first step to play its role and here’s the road map of how they have planned to strive to improve the quality of skills.

This is how QPro has taken up the responsibility by providing a road map to achieve that promised skillset and quality from our youth.

Meetups
First thing first, as an effort to change mindset through inculcating professional thinking among them, free meetups are arranged with professionals. Having opportunities to connect with professionals and successful people of the same niches they will get opportunities to learn a lot and determine their way to go.

Workshops
Arrangements of free training workshops are planned, in which industry experts will help them improve their skills and let them get aware with the international standards, trends and approaches to meet the challenges of time.

Contests
Learning is an ongoing process. In order to keep pace with the world we have to keep learning and upgrading our skills and capabilities. Arrangements of free competitions will help the participants to recognize what they lack and what capabilities others do have which need to be developed in them as well. This will provide them with the facility to keep improving.

QPro has got things rolling to build the community and improve the skillset of our youth in order to get them equipped and ready for a promising career path. This will also help give a boost to the business stature and the economy of the country.

Let’s spread the message and help our community, our youth to take advantage of the forum provided by QPro (http://www.qpro.pk) to boost our skillset, change our mindset and get ready to contribute something real positive to our country.

Important Website links

• http://qpro.pk/logo-design-competition ( Idea Logo Ka – Contest Winner )
• http://qpro.pk/contestant-logos.php?contestid=jZEeQyhfwMVBsTqgeB ( Participants )
• http://qpro.pk/events ( Recent Qpro Meetups )
• http://qpro.pk/workshops ( Recent Qpro Workshops )
• http://qpro.pk/competitions ( Recent Qpro Contests/competitions )