If you are even remotely online, you have likely seen the “Graphic Design is My Passion” memes. If you happen to have missed it in the (almost) 10 years since it first surfaced on the internet, it came about in 2014 by Tumbler user Youngterra. It consisted of a clip art frog against a grey, cloudy background. And, it said the words, “graphic design is my passion” written in bright red Papyrus. See here:
Since then, there have been iterations of the meme, all with a similar visual language of default display fonts, haphazard typography, and clip art. The sentiment of the meme is open to interpretation as is most art. However, we need to talk about it because it says so much about graphic design and graphic designers.
What it says about graphic design:
This meme shows us what we categorize as designed and what isn’t. In a world where branding is at the forefront of the general population’s understanding of graphic design, this meme has all of the visual language of a non-designer. It doesn’t follow any grid or have a brand narrative. It uses clip art and papyrus, a font that was made fun of on SNL. These are graphic elements that can be found and used on any default setting in a Word document. As a result, the meme shows us what we think classifies as design in the mainstream by showing us what we think design isn’t.
What it says about graphic designers:
Part of the joke hinges on the awareness of how graphic designers take themselves very seriously. 2014 fell within the height of girlbossing and the heyday of the corporate millennial. It makes sense that this meme came about in that era because the general outlook on life was about professionalism and hustle culture. A byproduct of that was a sentiment from boomers to “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”.
This inspired a whole generation of people that sought out to discover what they loved to do or their “passion”. This usually meant a shift to a creative profession (like graphic design) and monetizing them. Juxtaposing “graphic design is my passion” in papyrus against a background of random digital art is full of irony in this specific context, which is what made the meme so funny.
What it says about the context:
In 2014, when the “graphic design is my passion” meme went viral for the first time, a lot of graphic design in the mainstream focused on branding. This was a huge time for streetwear brands like Supreme or even Nike. Even tech companies like Apple and Google were (and are still) mainstream.
Whether they were huge corporations or small streetwear brands, these companies had brand guidelines, mission statements, and individual visual languages of their own. This differentiated them from competitors or “identities”. A lot of people, specifically and arguably most millennials, defined graphic design 10 years ago based on that understanding. This is what graphic designers and even non-designers learned to design for.
It’s ironic to think that there is a whole generation of people who could think that graphic design is a career of passion when most of the understanding of the profession is predicated on it being a profession to make companies more money. The role of graphic design isn’t a tool to only make companies more money. While it can be used for that, it isn’t limited to it.
The “graphic design is my passion” meme is a piece of digital graphic design history. It showed us what we classified as graphic design in 2014, a year in the era of young professional millennials. Our collective understanding about graphic design focused around branding for corporations and brands. It was a meme for designers and non-designers to appreciate. It was one real instance where graphic design and graphic designers were captured in the zeitgeist of the time.