This here is sort of related. If you handed over all your production, distribution and advertising to a company such as Google, does that free you up to simply focus on creating content?
I certainly think there are enough free platforms out there blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Creative Commons images, Photshop Express, Buzzword that mean you can create work online with very little effort. You just need time, I wouldn't even argue you need talent. Why not just do it for the sake of it if the resources are there and don't cost anything, you're not trying to be the next Tim Walker you're just uploading a few images to Flickr, maybe adding them to a group but not looking to get rich and famous.
But if all this stuff is out there do you really have infinite time? As a designer you might have time to create work but as a consumer or viewer do you have infinite time to view it all?
I think the other thing, as I keep on saying, is increasingly the audience will choose how they view your work. So to answer the question "How much of the following should the designer use to make their work:" it is becoming less of something that a designer can control. You know, you might design a print poster which someone else photographs and uploads to Flickr, that photograph is then posted in an article on a blog, thats at least three ways your work might be seen and you'd only designed a print poster. So who's work is it? The person who designed the poster? The person who took the photograph? The person writing the blog article? A combination of all three?
Then you throw in copyright and we come back to who's your audience and why you make work. (For pleasure, for money, for others, recogintion, response)
My point is the who, what, why, when and how is no longer as straight forward as it was. Previously you as the desginer would have had more control over those things, you could dictate how your work would be used/viewed. Now for a variety of reasons, not all to do with technology, the relationship between designer and viewer is changing. And the viewer has as many choices as the designer.
A lot of designers and indeed the others deeply involved in the product life cycle never have any choice, it is client led/ dominated. This has resulted in rainbow coloured comic sans monstrosities too many times. To be able to have all the media to choose from is the luxury of the freelancer who hasn't built up a strong enough reputation to dictate what be used. And even then they will lament the client that asks them to 'do another one just like the last one' because the public doesn't trust anything unfamiliar original or groundbreaking. I would argue yet further that the choice of media is not a problem, the problem is a blasé, ineffectual public who likes a cosy unchallenging life to carry on the same way it did since the stone age.
Everything has meaning from colours to format and this is brilliant because it means that what we make can have meaning of an order that has not yet been witnessed. It is an opportunity to make better work rather than a problem. The only real problem is keeping up with technology enough to be able to produce a version the way we want cause while we may be great with photoshop and illustrator then we might not know dreamweaver and flash so well so that aspect of the work suffers.
"I would argue yet further that the choice of media is not a problem, the problem is a blasé, ineffectual public who likes a cosy unchallenging life to carry on the same way it did since the stone age."
I agree that a large amount of design is still crap but over the past few years the abilty to filter that crap has become easier. So you no longer have to view the rubbish or you can choose to view the stuff you really like. This doesn't mean what you like is the best or the biggest it's the stuff that you like and the means of finding it have become easier.
re technology David Bryne on Power Point
"Having never used the program before, I found it limiting, inflexible, and biased, like most software. On top of that, PowerPoint makes hilariously bad-looking visuals. But that's a small price to pay for ease and utility. We live in a world where convenience beats quality every time. It was, for my purposes, perfect."
