The youth of a nation is its backbone but with an unemployment rate as high as 5.9 percent out of a population of approximately 200 million, Pakistan is struggling to make use of its youth.
As universities and colleges in Pakistan churn out fresh graduates into the market, sadly, the rate of employment is not high enough to absorb them. This begs us to ask the dreaded question: who is responsible? The answer is complex and the list of reasons endless, the scope of which this article will not cover. Instead, let’s focus on the saviors of the day – the corporate sector, in particular, logo designing businesses. They are the beacons of hope for our youths, and here’s why.
Logo Design and Beyond
While our government and political leaders continue to play the blame game, the graphic design industry has taken matters into its own hands. Software houses like Abtach, Digitonics, Maxobiz, and Right Solution have timely interfered and hired local graphic design talent to serve their customers.
Aside from logo design and brand identity design, their businesses also provide web design, web development, software development, app development, and game development services, making them one of the highest revenue generators for Pakistan.
The interesting fact is that these companies serve more global clients, mainly from the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, South Africa and European markets where the competition is extremely tough. It’s through their platforms that our talented youth get the chance to compete against the likes of Indians, Filipinos, Chinese, Bangladeshis, Vietnamese, and even Western graphic designers.
Can you even imagine, a Pakistani, designing logos for corporate America or Hollywood studios? Admit it, it’s a proud moment to savor. That’s not all.
Absorbing the Talent Pool
As logo design companies grow at a rapid speed, their growth roll over to effectively absorb thousands of eager and talented fresh graduates, giving them the opportunity to work and look forward to in terms of career development.
Take LogoDesign.net for example, one of the biggest template based logo companies in the world, inducts fresh graduates from vocational as well as media science institutes like Arena Multimedia, MITI, Aptech, SZABIST, and Iqra University. They’re then trained on the job, work side by side with senior designers, and eventually given projects to work independently.
Their rudimentary knowledge of designing is enhanced through rigorous training, mentoring and standardizing which help build confidence and skills, matching those of international logo designers. It is companies like these which are making a difference, utilizing existing skilled labor force to push down the unemployment rate and help build our nation’s future. In a country where the average salary is Rs. 20,000 per month, logo designers have the earning capacity that rivals any skilled labor with a median salary of Rs. 40,000 per month.
Challenging the Future
With two million youths entering the job market every year, one would expect political leaders and the government realize the influx is going to create a bigger unemployment gap in the future, but not so. They remain blissfully ignorant.
Here’s what we propose. Don’t develop more universities and colleges to churn out educated and skilled labor just for graphic designing industry, we have enough of those. What we, as a growing nation needs, is more organizations like logo design companies to help build stepping stones for our youths. We need to develop diversified skills to channel them into industries like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, IoT and such technologies. After all, we know our youngsters are capable enough.
Having said that, at the moment we do not have the infrastructure nor a robust corporate sector to induct such highly skilled labor. I would like to quote John F. Kennedy here: “There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long- range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
It’s time we take action.
Here are some logo design companies in Pakistan: Brandmakers, Creative Art, Vertex, Chromebrains, Multimediamars, Softandhost.
