Smart Up, Schools!

Why is it so hard to be a designer professionally?

Seriously, why?

Well the easy answer is that there are more designers than there are needs for designers.  Whether this is a short term economic problem or a long term “new normal” remains to be seen.  But why are there too many designers for not enough jobs?  Is it too easy to become a designer?

Design schools might be too easy to get into, or too easy to get through.  It is considered by many to be a lesser form of making, and the standards of design schools reflect that.  You can be an engineer if you want to make stuff.  You can be a construction manager.  You can be a craftsman.  But designers are too often filled by the ranks of those who are interested in glamor, not making the coolest stuff ever.  That changes the conversation in the classroom, and therefore, in the resulting working world.

Now there are a ton of people out there who want to be designers, and not enough jobs to support their dreams.  Disa-freakin-ppointing.

Becky

I Never Wanted to Be This Person

I caved.

I bought an iPhone a few weeks ago, and I have to say, I did everything I could to convince myself to buy something else.  Being the lame bougie trendsetter wannabe that I am, I needed to hate this populist gadget.  But honestly?  I love my new little toy.

We could discuss its simple design, easy interface, features, blah blah blah blah.  None of that is what surprised me about it, since I’ve been subjected to dork rants on the subject for years now.  Not interested.

What I thought was cool was recently brought to my attention by a book I’ve been reading.  It’s called Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things, by Donald A. Norman.  Part of it goes into how we make even our most logical decisions based on emotions, so the way to sell a product is to design it to make us feel warm and fuzzy while we use it.  That’s marketing 101.  But feeling like we’ve “made it” just by pulling our phone out?  That’s impressive.

I’ve been playing with my phone in public now, and I notice that when I do, I feel more successful, more fashionable, more “with it”.  Merge that with a high-performance piece of technology, and I have to give this win to Cupertino.  And while that makes me feel like a huge Apple-pheliac, which I hate because I think Steve Jobs is the spawn of the devil, at least now I understand why it’s socially acceptable to ignore other people at parties in favor of playing on your phone.

Becky