A couple of days ago I saw someone had posted a story to: “People used to stand for something” by Jordan Allen on my tweetdeck which soon got me wondering: “What do I, as a designer, stand for?”. My natural reflex started tossing adjectives in my mind such as ethical, moral, sustainable, green, socially conscious, but they’re just pretty words and it left me wondering what I really stand for in the design world.

There are two kinds of designers. Designers who design to pay bills, and designers who design for something greater. Most, if not all, want to be the latter; yet most, if not all, fall under the former. There is nothing wrong with using your design expertise as a means to keep up with rent. It’s something we all have to face. But a mentor once posed the question to me: What’s more important: your rent or your morals?

My response at the time was my rent.  I was also only 18 and despite having worked since the age of 14 to support myself financially I was naive as to how overwhelming something as simple as rent could be.  I quickly found out that my morals fell through the floor when it came to taking any design job regardless of how morally, ethically, and irresponsible the project.  It was only in my later years at Parsons the New School for Design that I did a complete 180 back to my morals.  I started taking design research courses, sociology, anthropology, pyschology related to art, philosophy, and business classes and all of these things helped me not only redefine myself as a designer, but as a person.  

Much to my dismay I found that there were only a small number of young designers who had even bothered to change themselves in this manner.  Not only in New York City, but all over America.  Design to them was about trends, money, and fame.  While these there are important, they should no way dictate your workflow or creative process.  From my learning, I’ve reasoned that design is not a process to make -something-, it’s a philosophy and processed used to find creative, ethical, and sustainible solutions to complex problems that exist in our world.  But what I see a lot of now, especially within the online design community, is trend following trend and ass-kissing received by more ass-kissing.  

To free myself of the litany and excuses plagued by those in my own field, I’ve established a set of personal guidelines and rules that I’ve sworn to follow as a designer.

1. I will not follow trends unless they apply relevantly to the project I am working on
2. Failure is always possible, and I need to know when I’m in over my head.
3. Whatever I design: product, graphic, system, it will be ethical and beneficial to the correct group of people it targets.
4. I will not let my designs and design skillset suffer because of oppinions of others in my field.
5. Yet I will always understand the importance of constructive criticism made by my peers. 
6. I will practice my skills as a designer at any chance I get applying them to any situation I can.
7. I must remember that my designs are never for myself, but for something greater.
8. Perfection as designer means there is a limit to how good I can become, I will seek to -always- better my skills and learn new things.
9. I will consult and converse with not only those in my field, but those in fields far from my own to grasp a better understanding as people as a whole.
10. I will stand up for my design work when it is necessary and I know in my heart that it is right.
11. Finally, I will remind myself that design can’t save the world.  But it can help move things in the right direction.

Now I ask of you, designers, artists, creatives, and intellectuals…do you have guidelines and morals you follow in your own work?  

If so post them here and let’s get a discussion going about your own self reflection on yourselves as individuals.

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Name: Aaron Irizarry

Website: http://www.thisisaaronslife.com

What does he hate about other designers?:

Unwillingness to share their tips and knowledge, we are a community, we should be willing to help others just like someone has helped us along.

Name: Eric Swain

Website: http://www.thegamecritique.com

What does he hate about other designers?:

Hate is a strong word, but I dislike when designers experiment with changing with practices that have become standard without the basic understanding of why theose practices became standard. Experimentation for the sake of learning is one thing, but then they tout out finished products with these changes and call it innovative when its really just broken.

Name: Brian Hoff

Website: http://www.thedesigncubicle.com

What does he hate about other designers?:

There’s really nothing that I can say I hate about other designers, but what I do dislike is individuals that “own” a copy of Photoshop and all of a sudden they are designers. Design must be learned and understood. It’s about communicating a message and problem solving, not applying a few fancy effects in Photoshop and calling it a design.

Name: Meroko

Website: N/A

What does She hate about other designers?:

Hmm..maybe not hate, but I’m jealous that it seems like all the designers I know already know how to use the web/design websites effectively and I come from a print background, so I am way behind. I’m working on that for 2009 though. Watch out!

Name: JAC

Website: N/A

What does She hate about other designers?:

preconceptions, arrogance, and ignorance. 

1–most people are narrow-minded and are set to think that the way they perceive the world is right (the only way and reason). or, whatever they learned if they went to school for it, or learned from other people (art masters or not) is the first and foremost reason. granted, people go around living with the various accumulated knowledge that they acquired throughout their lives so far, but many are not open into seeing things in other ways or perspectives (tipping the balance of design they don’t understand as inferior works, if it doesn’t fall into their end of the scale [which would be the "superior"]).

2–going along with the first peev, arrogance is a folly. to truly appreciate and understand the concepts behind design or art for that matter, requires one to be completely accepting of any ideas that may come through. it has been a great debate to whether function is more important than form, but in the end, the style and technique of the final product are the essence of the result. i hate it when people say they could’ve done things better, especially when they have a completely different style. their ways of thinking of the concept may be the same, but the outcome will be visually different. none can be better than the other if they are in different genres. some people don’t get this… others that are worse, THINK they can do better when they don’t have the skills to, or don’t produce (so no one ever knows if they really could have done better or not. usually, these people under the arrogance umbrella are talkers, non-action-takers.

3–finally, “ignorance is bliss?” well, maybe sometimes in LIFE. but in design, one really doesn’t want to be. politics, worldly events, even weather all have their own narratives when they get tied into a piece. research is one of the foremost things that is required when a project is started. essays are like this too. the process must start out with a concept, followed and backed by actual facts, which could either be transformed or used to express the piece. satires (like the new yorker covers) are popular because although the art is in poor taste, they are always up-to-date, based on reality, but share a mocking fantasy that the masses can understand right away (if they weren’t ignorant).

many people are different. i’m just pointing out the people that fall under these categories, because they are marked permanently on my bad / avoid-or-else-will-be-pissy-for-the-rest-of-the-day list for the reasons described above. even the best designers can fall under these. i try not to judge, since i don’t know the history of people’s lives, but if it is blatant, well…AVOID. waste of time.

Name: Angie Bowen

Website: http://arbent.net

What does She hate about other designers?:

I really don’t hate anything about other designers. The design community has some of the friendliest and most helpful people I’ve ever met

Name: Marnie B

Website: http://www.marnieb.com

What does She hate about other designers?:

Egos, in some cases. But I think most of all I hate those that devalue the work we do. Ie. Charging $80 for a logo design that’s worth $600 or $200 for a website design

Name: Emily Veras

Website: http://hcggd.com

What does She hate about other designers?:

I really dont hate something in particular about any designer because designers are well in fact , people. I can say that as designers we are very competitive as well as judgmental as we should be in some cases and what pushes us to not only become better people but designers as well.

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Let’s start with the things that DON’T and NEVER will make a good designer in any field:

(It’s great and productive to have -some- of these things, but God help you if you think it entitles you to some sort of designer title).

1. Black Rimmed Glasses. – I know for a fact they don’t give you a new perspective on design.
2. Being a Hipster. – Normally assosciated with some sort of art and design background.  False.  Designers don’t spend money to look like they don’t have money.  Money is meant for Adobe.
3. Owning The White Hand of God Products (iPhone, Macs, etc). – If you don’t get the White Hand of God Reference you’ve never taken a semiotics class and shouldn’t be designing anything.
4. 3/4 Black and White Myspace Headshots that make you look better than you really are. – The picture says enough. Not even Photoshop could make this girl look ‘artsy’.
5. Drinking Lattes or any form of cafinated hot drink that doesn’t start with “Cof” and end with “ee”.  - $1 for coffee or $4 for a lattee?  I wonder.  Frugal, Frugal, Frugal.  Design costs $$$.
6. Owning a moleskin journal. – When did these suddenly become insanely trendy?  Useful they are, but they’re not an icon to represent designers.  We’ll use napkins to sketch ideas if need-be.
7. Being friends with other ‘designers’ on Twitter. – It’s kind of like digg, one giant political system, no one will properly critisize your work as long as you keep giving them floats & diggs.
8. Posting lists of resources. – Posting lists is great for other designers, until you realize people only posts lists because they have nothing substantive to say.          

There are plenty of other things but this completely distracts from the point of this article which is below & Big up’s to google for these images:

If you’ve gone to any accredited design university, college, or trade school there is one question that is bound to come up no matter what field of design you hail from: What makes a good designer?  The question rivals some of the most paradoxical philosophical questions today and is very much the center of debate among design researchers and scholars.  The question applies to all fields of design and suggests that there are basic requirements and that there is an ideological designer that all designers should aspire to be.  After copious amounts of design research both at universities and on my own, I’ve come to the personal conclusion that the ideological ‘good’ designer is one whom can design ethically functional societies and systems.

You might be asking yourself now: Design a Society?  I daresay Fred McCoy I’m through with Megalongcat and this foolishness.  But I must ask you to wait and hear me through.  What would it take to design the systems to help run a functional society?  Te help think about this, I’d like to point out here that being a designer is awkwardly similar to being a scientist.  The scientific method applies to how ‘Good’ Designers should go about design. Here’s the scientific method:

SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY:

1. Observe some aspect of the universe, “free from bias.”
2. Invent a hypothesis that is consistent with what your empirically described observations.
3. Form a falsifiable theory to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations.
5. Modify the hypothesis into a theory in the light of your results.
6. Publish your findings in a peer reviewed journal (Newer addition)
7. Consider criticisms offered, and revise your theory
8. Go to step 3. 

You might be wondering how to apply this to design, especially since nothing about being creative, talented or being abreast of trends is mentioned here.  The fact of the matter is the above methodology is how designers can think about going about their projects:

1. Find a problem in the world regardless of what it is.
2. Create a well though, plausible, and ethical solution.
3. Publish a well-written proposal and outline for your solution.
4. Prototype, Prototype, Prototype.
5. Test the prototype in the field.
6. Gather observations and publish in a document to send to relevant scholars, peers, designers, and artists.
7. Take in all constructive criticism and revise solution.
8. Return to step 4.

This is nothing more than a general guide, rather than any sort of hard rule of thumb for designers to think about their projects.  I will leave you with two parting notes.  The first is that if you can design a logo, you have the thought process and capabilities to  design a solution to war in the middle east.

The second is that when design is done right, no one will have any idea you did anything at all.

What are YOUR thoughts on what makes a good designer?  I’m sure there’s plenty to be said for my article which pigeonholes a lot of people who will come across this article.

**My profile picture you see everywhere associated with Megalongcat is the 3/4th’s MySpace headshot with black rimmed glasses.  It’s there to make fun of the very people described above, the glasses are actually 3D glasses I got from the movies. . 

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