I love designing. I just can’t see myself spending the rest of my life doing it. The words that follow could be perceived as whining, and on some level, I can’t disagree with that assessment. Even a skinned knee, trivial as it may be, is grounds some complaining though, right? I don’t mean to bitch. I’m just tired of justifying every decision I make.

The “problem” with design (web & print are the only two that I can speak to)is that the visual capacity that it involves is something that most all humans share, since we’re mostly all blessed with sight. Likewise, accountants share with us the basic human comprehension of math, musicians the prevailing ability to hear, etc. Perhaps these professions all suffer the same frustrations as I do with design: it gets really old hearing “suggestions” from those who don’t make a living doing what you do.

“I have a computer, and if someone had taught me how to use that program I could probably do that too!”

Per usual, my sub-par writing has spiraled into obscurity. So, an example is in order.

I started a project almost two years ago at my job, to redesign a very large, very out-dated and unfortunately complex collection of web sites. The reason it took two years is entirely not my fault (I just want to add that to the record.) Anyway, these two years of frustrating, proverbial teeth-pulling finally came to an end this week when the first layer of sites finally launched. No fanfare or parade, but to be honest, that’s how I like it (nor is it warranted!). The problem at hand, though, is that out of the woodworks creep the armchair designers, the PhD’s who believe that everyone wants to hear their opinion, including you Mr. “Designer.” There are the pleasantly forceful secretaries that would like you to know that this color choice was wrong, and couldn’t you just bump this up a smidgen? From every corner of the company comes the advice, the feedback, the general comments and sometimes the down-right unstructured criticism. None of it is solicited. Very little of it is useful.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I try explaining it to The Wife™, who is giving me her best blank stare. I attempt to put it into a different context (as I have an annoying habit of doing). Would you send your mechanic an email telling him that he should perhaps think about switching the brand of wrenches that he uses? I wouldn’t, because I trust his professional decision. (The Wife™ would unhelpfully respond here with, “Why would you email your mechanic?”) Similarly, I wouldn’t look disapprovingly at my physician and tell her that I think she’s holding this instrument incorrectly. (Wife: “But designers aren’t doctors!”) The point is, people who spend their entire working careers doing what they do, do it for a reason. And if they’re good at it, and you have no concept of how to do what they do, let them be. That’s what they go to school for and get paid for, right?

The catch here is that feedback and criticism are also critical to the design process. Unwarranted, poorly written (read: condescending) and demeaning feedback is counterproductive though. And after years of having every single decision I make be questioned by those who did not go to school for the same training as I did…it gets exhausting. No, I’m not advocating plugging my ears and ignoring the rest of the world, the worldwide audience that I design for in the first place. I guess I’m just frustrated that other people don’t treat designers as equal professionals. It all goes back to the old “well I have a computer, and if someone had taught me how to use that program I could probably do that too” mentality that so many today hold. Ask any designer and they’ll smirk, “yup, everyone thinks they’re a designer.”

I’m not bitter about it. I expect it before it happened with this particular project. But there’s no way to prepare for the lack of respect that your profession gets when virtually every decision you make is called into question by someone of a completely unqualified background.

So don’t tell your doctors how to insert a catheter correctly unless you really know what you’re talking about. Don’t counsel your lawyers to speak more articulately in court, don’t suggest that your tailor remeasure that hem, and don’t dare tell your mother how to care for her cold unless you’re entirely sure you have the place to. Just because you’ve been to a hospital, watched Law & Order, own a sewing kit or had the sniffles yourself…it doesn’t mean you’re in the right place to be rude to someone who spends their entire day trying to make the lives of people just like yourself just a little better.

Now I’m off to find the cleaning staff to tell them that they obviously don’t know how to vacuum, because just look at this floor!