Next they'll just put 'em in the Crackerjacks box

This just in... as posted by Babs, my icon and inspiration (and the answer to so many of my "drawing a blank" design times: "WWBD?") -- iStock has made it possible for all us designers to unload all those pesky logos that are just taking up space on our hard drives. And here it is:

If you create one of the first 10,000 approved logo designs for iStockphoto by January 1, 2010, we’ll pay you $5 per approved logo and another $5 if we reach 10,000 approved logos by that date. So fire up Illustrator to create some amazing logos or dust off all those much-loved logos that never made it past the third round with a client.
Woo hoo. "Fire up Illustrator", huh? This is just depressing.

Re-defined behind my back!

I've discovered something. Designers are now programmers, by agreement of just about everybody except myself. Listings for graphic artists are now all for User Interface Developers, Flash Developers, Actionscript developers... I'm sure there are quite a number of skilled visual creative professionals who also happen to be skilled programmers, but in my experience, the visualizers usually cringe at excessive use of code, and the code crunchers would prefer not to be pixel-jockeys. But during my career I have seen the job of "designer" absorb several other careers: image scanner, typesetter, lithographer (truly though, how many designers even now really understand how or why to trap their graphics?), air brush retouch artist . . . I miss the collaboration with all these skilled pros. As a new artist at an ad agency, just a few months out of school, I was able to spend a lot of time with one of the local litho shop owners, and I learned more from him than I did in any of my college classes. Now the guy sells real estate. Sad, this elimination of the team, but apparently it was inevitable. But I cannot for the life of me see how a designer is now also supposed to be a programmer. There is some helpful software, yeah... but I simply can't see it happening. Perhaps the programmers will now all be expected to be designers... aye me. I've already seen the results of THAT idea. No, no, it takes two completely different types of thinkers to really do both of those jobs well. Unfortunately that's not what the ole bottom line wants. The bottom line wants to cross right through one paycheck or the other. I have no solution for that.
...OK... let's see.
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Oh, yeah. That's what my BFA is all about.