[Sigia-l] Putting the "Graphic" back with"Designer"(was:thelesser importance of home pages)

[Christopher Fahey]

>>  Actually, according to you (see above), what we do have is *two*
designers.
>
>  No, what Christopher has are two masters-of-one-trade, as opposed to
>  Designers as I describe them. 

No, I described people working on one set of highly-related tasks (i.e., one
trade) at a time. I didn't say anything about their actual masteries of
tasks/trades outside of those areas. 

In your model, would it be appropriate to divide the labor this way?:
- One person does the mood boards, the site maps, the text layouts, the
flowcharts, the photography, and the functional specs.
- The other does the the logo, the search taxonomy, the color studies, the
typography, the page wireframes, the illustrations, and the business
requirements.

To me that sounds like a crazy way to split up the work, even if both people
were equally masterful at all of the listed tasks. A more logical way would
be to decide who is better at graphic stuff and assign them the
graphic-related work, and the one who is better at interaction design and
information architecture would do the IA-related work. The first person we'd
call the "graphic designer", and the second we'd call the "information
architect". 


> The irony here is that Christopher's "master of one trade" 
> doesn't know or care about the whole problem. In one 
> sense, the less he knows about the whole problem, the 
> more he can concentrate on the one trade he knows about.

Again, I never said that at all, and it's important to me that I don't let
that stand. In no way does the *existence* of craft specializations mean
that a person acting in a specialized way can't be a master of other crafts.

My colleagues are graphic designers who are better information architects
and interaction designers than most IAs I've ever met. They do strategy,
management, and IA tasks on projects all the time. When they're doing the
IA, we'll say "Sue is doing the IA" or "Sue is acting as the information
architect" or even "Sue is the IA". That way we and the client both know
what to expect of Sue for the project. Generally, however, we'll think of
Sue as a graphic designer because Sue kicks butt at graphic design and
really wants to gain experience in it and become masterful at it. 

You may be surprised to learn that I often consider myself, like you, a
holistic "designer". That's because I both lead projects and work on them,
and usually have to wear multiple hats. But I would also say that because of
my career experience I am far better at IA work than I am at graphic design
or programming, and I often act as the IA lead on our projects, and more
often than not I work with other designers and technologists who specialize
in those areas rather than work with other people whose skills are like
mine. When acting as lead IA, it's helpful for my clients and teammates to
use that job title (or hat title) to understand mutual responsibilities. 

Hollywood analogy: All members of a film shoot should probably have a good
idea about the script nuances, the art direction, the photography style, the
special effects, etc. But ultimately they have specific jobs to do. If
everyone on the shoot was called "Director", it would be a disaster. In
fact, if everyone in the film industry thought of themselves as a director,
and focused their career efforts on being a director, the film industry
would fall apart and nothing would ever get done. Yeah, I know that many in
the industry have fantasies to direct, and that's great, but they still
subscribe to their cinematography, lighting, and special effects trade
magazines.

I wonder if your argument is based on a fear that announcing or pursuing any
sort of specialization will suggest to people that one is NOT skilled in
another area -- precisely the assumption you made about my example scenario.
Which makes me suspect that you and I might live in different professional
worlds. I've never EVER in my life met a graphic designer who thought that
non-graphic-design issues were off limits to them, or even not part of their
responsibility. I begin with the assumption that a good graphic designer has
strong interaction design skills, for example, and I am disapointed when
they do not. Likewise, I've never met a information architect (who was any
good) who didn't have a lot of insight into what makes good graphic design
(although I've met plenty of awesome information architects who were
anywhere from mediocre to just terrible at actually doing the work of
graphic design). The scenario you described, where team members build
impermeable walls between them based on their job titles, was entirely alien
to me. Everyone I work with actually wants to participate in everything, and
usually everyone has some voice in every aspect in which they have the
appropriate skills and knowledge. But project management (and common sense)
dictates that we can't have four people making a site map at the same time,
and that the client can't call just any old person on the team to ask them
to change the logo.

It's also possible that you live in a world where everyone on the team is an
expert at all aspects of Holistic Design, where everyone is simultaneously a
great programmer, graphic designer, information architect, etc, and where
all Design artifacts and files are worked on by collaboratively by everyone
on the team simultaneously and integrated using CVS, wikis, and advanced
collaborative design software. That sounds awesome.

More likely, however, I think you are basically saying "Let's call the
project leader the 'Designer'". Which sounds great to me, actually. I just
don't see how that extends to mean that the AIGA shouldn't be working on
behalf of graphic designers primarily, nor does it extend to mean that
graphic design is a useless term.

-Cf

Christopher Fahey
____________________________
Behavior
http://www.behaviordesign.com
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