Imagine that every year all the roads in the world were updated and you had to re-learn or take a refresher courses in what had changed in order to drive again. Or better yet, try to imagine what it would be like if every year or so the petals on your car might be converted to, I don't know, something like "multi-toe touch" input.

That is about what happens every 12 to 18 months in the creative world we work in.

Happy with your current computer? Forget about it... it won't run the latest software.

Happy with your current page layout app? Forget about it... it's going to be totally different in version 2.0.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind upgrades and I am generally a happy camper with all the techno-geeky junk that goes with it. I'm not here to gripe and moan about the costs of these upgrades - quite the contrary. I find these costs of doing business painful but very acceptiable considering the level of quality they add to my work flows. I do find problems with the frequency of the upgrades and the very real productivity that gets lost every year just trying to do our jobs. The latest release of Adobe's Creative suite is an excellent example of the ware we wage. There is no way that InDesign and Photoshop are not the industry standard, however, to keep up with this standard you now really must be on an Intel based machine or else your production times will suffer. I know it sounds over generalizing but honestly have you tried working in all the apps on an older machine? It is really a test of patience and a loss of income for all the wasted time.

But what about our clients?
Are they too going to suffer? Every deadline assumes that the design studio is up and running. Never will you hear a client ask to get their brochure designed on the latest software.. they could care less. Sure they could suffer but we keep most of the pain from ever filtering their way. We give them results and keep the behind the sceens magic to ourselves. My ultimate concern is what this does to our industry.

We continue to upgrade our creaative tools at such an alarming pace that output and service profesionals are constantly being outdated, outpriced, and simply left behind. We offer no base or industry standard for creative workflow. A similar thought would be if every year the fuel for your car was new and improved. Each service station in the world would have to upgrade their equipment to cary the new fuel source. Not only that but they would need to keep options available for legacy fules cars as well so now the service stations have double the inventory and twice the costs with no new real increase in sales.

This is what we are doing to the print and web industry as many other services struggle to keep up as we rush to upgrade each year. I'm not suggestiong that we stop upgrading, because thats not going to happen. I just want to make sure that we start thinking about the results we are having on our own industry and try to develop baseline methods for files and software so that these transitions can be rolled out without the dire consequences we have historically seen on many of the friends and clients who have been left behind in our pursuit of the latest and greatest.