Indus­try Report on Corona

A cur­rent indus­try report by the Pro­fes­sion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Design­ers (BDG) paints a bleak pic­ture of the com­ing months. The third wave, accord­ing to the BDG’s eval­u­a­tion, is also hav­ing a full impact on com­mu­ni­ca­tion design.

One third of the par­tic­i­pants in the sur­vey, which was con­duct­ed for the eighth time since the begin­ning of the pan­dem­ic, believe that the cri­sis in the design indus­try will last at least until the end of this year. Just over a quar­ter (26 per­cent) even fear that the next few months will be more dif­fi­cult than last year.

And many are strug­gling to sur­vive: Every third design­er has to cope with sales loss­es of 25 to 75 per­cent from 2020 — with no prospect of an improve­ment in the near future. On the con­trary, expe­ri­ence shows that eco­nom­ic crises do not hit design­ers any less hard than oth­er indus­tries, only with a time delay.

This is the cri­sis in the design indus­try, which will have a much more mas­sive impact. It will great­ly change the design indus­try and prob­a­bly also make it small­er. Accord­ing to the BDG, the slug­gish adjust­ment of assis­tance ben­e­fits for solo self-employed work­ers plays a not insignif­i­cant role in this.

From Feb­ru­ary 19 to March 19, the BDG con­duct­ed its indus­try mon­i­tor­ing on the eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of the pan­dem­ic. This time, 146 com­mu­ni­ca­tion design­ers* par­tic­i­pat­ed. The results fur­ther con­sol­i­date the pic­ture that has already emerged in pre­vi­ous mon­i­tor­ing sur­veys. The bdg has pub­lished the detailed results of the sur­vey (in Ger­man) on its website.

There is also a con­tin­u­ous­ly updat­ed overview of nation­wide and state-spe­cif­ic assis­tance for design­ers (in German).

Graph­ic: Susanne Bre­it­feld / BDG