What is a designer?
A confusing selection of responses based on who knows what. What is a designer? This is something that Poynor gets at to some degree in his piece "Time for being against." If the general public don't have a clue what we're doing then we've failed at communicating our own role. How are we going to convince a client we're valuable?
But then again, if you put a designer on the spot how well will they respond? Is it possible to communicate exactly what we do in just a few seconds in front of a camera?
Off the top of my own head...
What is a designer?
A designers role is to interpret information, sometimes complex, and turn it into something useful. It's a problem-solving position that requires one to look at the world and question the status quo and investigate if things can be done better, if things can be communicated better, if practices can be smoothed out and made simpler. We take ideas and make them reality. We create new things, or fix old ones. A designer uses their "creativity" to craft messages in such a way that their meaning can be predictably interpreted by the receiver. Much of our knowledge comes from semiotics—how signs signify meaning and how that meaning is understood by others. We navigate cultural norms seeking to exploit and subvert them for the good of society (well, that's the goal anyway!).
Not a bad start but needs far more critical support.
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