“As designers increasingly promote themselves primarily as strategists, consultants and business-people first, they do so often by sacrificing the one thing they have that separates them from their clients: the ability to think and express ideas visually. And at some point, you have to wonder: if you look like them, and act like them, and talk like them, and think like them, and use the same tools as they do ... well, what the hell would they need you for?

i found this to be quite the thought provoker. read all of it here - speak up, untitled. an essay by marian bantjes.

“But when I read about the lives of designers who practiced 20 to 40 years ago, I think about their approach and the environment that they necessarily brought their clients into: an environment totally foreign to the business person, full of pencil crayons and markers and a kind of mysterious magic of the other. Clients must have been very aware that they were buying something that they themselves did not possess and would never possess. It must have been a little frightening and a little thrilling for them.

that's not what i, nor the author, means, no

"Don't get me wrong. I would never argue that strategy is not an important part of design—it is certainly one of the most important—or that collaboration is not desirable, or that results are not necessary. These are all things that are integral parts of the design process and which separate designers from fine artists."


Since when are considerations like strategy, collaboration, or (OMFG) results not a part of fine arts?

Well, certainly don't call me a graphic designer.

But don't call yourself a tech because you've got a screwdriver and disk warrior.

^ lmao