What earns the title of being a Designer?

I wanted to copy and paste this ENTIRE article from the Six Revisions website posted on St. Patrick’s Day. I didn’t ask for permission, but I’m telling you in advance I didn’t write this article, just go here to view its original. Brilliant. At least I’m not supplying you with apidextra. Right!

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What Earns the Title of “Designer”?

Discussions seem to always point to how busy a designer is — or rather, in a cruelty filled cat-scratch with a ring of truth — how not busy they are and why.

Everyone is a designer these days. Many blame it on the personal home computer. With Microsoft Word, anyone who can create a garage sale flier or announcement for a child’s birthday party is a “designer.” Some argue they are just not a “professional” designer.

What is the distinction and what does it really matter? In my mind, there are many factors.

You are probably a designer if:

• You are the weird kid who drew in your schoolbooks while other kids studied hard and told the teacher you weren’t working.
• You make a living, or at least a good part of it (the economy being what it is), from design.
• Peers treat you like a professional.
• You’re somewhere on the first page of Google for something you designed.
• Relatives demand you do a logo for their new business and you wish lightening would strike you dead right there at the dinner table.
• You want to strangle people for offering you $50 to design a website for them.
• You worry about a client paying so you can make the rent and eat.
• You bitch about having to pay the outrageous price of some design publications.
• You get angry and call the people in the design magazines “overrated hacks.”
• You consider wearing a hook and eye patch from all the design software you have to pirate.
• You know the difference between RGB and CMYK and know they are not TV stations.
• You think crowdsourcing and design contests are eroding the industry.
• You swear your kids will never go to art school!
• You are starting to see a point to this article.

You probably are just playing at being a designer if:

• You were the kid telling on the kid drawing in his/her schoolbooks.
• When a relative asks you to do the logo for their business you get excited and tweet to your 12 followers about it.
• When you walk up to a group chatting at a design event, they roll their eyes, become very quiet and scatter quickly — while you are still in mid-sentence.
• You are on the first page of Google only for being arrested or burning down your house by smoking in bed.
• You get excited at $50 for designing a website.
• Your spouse pays all the bills and you have no idea where the checkbook is kept, nor do you care.
• You subscribe to every design magazine to put on the coffee table but never actually read them.
• If you read the design magazines, you feel anxiety rising within you because you are jealous of the people in the publications.
• You ask your spouse to buy the latest version of Adobe CS, 24 hours before it’s released and they do it just to shut you up.
• You enroll your kids in every art class there is in town and go with them and yell about how their work is “sloppy” and “lazy” until they cry.
• You think this article is mean and I’m an idiot.

Why the Distinction Matters

Almost daily, we deal with “design-by-committee” from those who feel we are too stupid to be able to do our jobs properly or they, by some thought process, are better due to the corporate pecking order.

Having other “designers” helping knock down our profession in the eyes of clients certainly doesn’t help. Have you ever heard a client offer a low fee and say, “our last designer did it for $50!” The next question should be, “Then why don’t you call him/her to do this project?” The answer would be he/she wasn’t any good.

Have you ever spoken with a client who wanted some spec work first to make sure you could do the work? That’s because the last “designer” screwed up. This is the fallout suffered by working professionals.

At the last Phoenix Design Week, a key speaker, Brian Singer, creative director and founder of Altitude Associates, a San Francisco based creative agency and the creator of The 1000 Journals Project (a global art experiment where journals are passed from hand to hand) made a statement about a design community and the ability to elevate it to epic proportions.

“The way you get ahead in design is by lifting up those around you,” Singer said. Sound advice!

It also works the other way around; those around you lower design for you.

There are several professions that have such dilettantes attached. Actors, writers, even dancers, suffer from those who have no talent but push their way into the inner circles of those who do. Would American Idol be as entertaining if it didn’t start with the lame people who think they have singing talent?

While on the board of a top-level professional organization that had two membership levels — professionals, proven with portfolios and the signature of six members and associates who were involved in the arts in some supportive way — there was a question of unjuried shows. It seems some associate members wanted to show their work as well.

While almost all professional members flat out refused the idea of sullying the organization’s reputation, one board member imparted that they should be allowed to join in because the entire membership “might miss seeing some beautiful art.”

Needless to say, there was no beautiful art to miss, except for future shows boycotted by professional members. What was left in the shows hurt the organization’s reputation.

See how it works?

{read more—the article is long!}