I’m pretty sure that I’m a designer. I have a couple of degrees in the field and more than a few job titles with the word “design” in them, so I take that to mean it’s something I am capable of. The funny thing is that many other people without any of those things that I have feel that they are more than capable of doing all that highfalutin design stuff. Designers are everywhere, it seems. I should have saved all that college money and bought myself something nice instead.

It’s not like designers are doctors or lawyers who have to pass tests and get fancy certificates to hang on their office walls, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are factually what they claim to be. The exception might be architects that do, in fact, design for a living and also require testing and certification to lay claim to their professional titles but having buildings that don’t collapse is a good enough reason for that. While not all other areas of design have such a consistently high bar to clear in terms of the preservation of human life, there are certainly situations where you don’t want an amateur—or at the very least, an amateur alone—to have sole designer responsibility.

In spite of what some may think, designers are knowledgeable and possess specific talents and skills that you don’t pick up through osmosis just because you use stuff that’s been designed. Just because you’ve flown on an airplane to visit your grandmother in Albequerque doesn’t mean you’re ready to pilot the aircraft. Yet, design isn’t given the same institutional respect. Anyone can design because all you’re dealing with are colors and forms and maybe some words, and who can’t do that?

It’s a shame, really, because a lot of the same people who bemoan so loudly all of the things they have to use that are so poorly designed are also the ones most vocal about their ability to design the better mousetrap. Ironically they lack the self-awareness that would lead them to realize those terrible designs may have just been created by someone who shares the same self-aggrandized opinion of their own untrained design skills.