Are We Designers?

The fundamental skill is talent. Talent is a rare commodity. It’s all intuition. And you can’t teach intuition. - Paul Rand

A simple question I often ask myself as a Graphic Designer is “Why do I Design?” Well the answer can differ from time to time and from project to project, but the one consistency answer is, to help people communicate better; in short “to solve the communication gap.”

However, as a designer, do we really care? Do we always have to find the problem in every project? Can’t we just go on and deliver what the Clients’ want? Yes, we can provide a design that clients want rather than what they need and satisfy their immediate requirement for a design. But if we do that, the big question that comes in is that Are We Designers?

“Creativity happens in response to a problem. When it comes to advertising, finding the tension to spark creative can come from a variety of places: your brand vs. the other brand, cultural issues (i.e., we celebrate thin people as ideal but we also love crappy, fattening food), contrasting ideologies and themes, unseemly things in a product category.”- Luke Sullivan

The ability to see these problems and being able to solve them by providing a design solution is what makes us designers - the mind that visualizes the forms, spaces and layout. The eye for detail that feels uncomfortable with the inappropriate line-height in paragraphs, the thoughts that asked why, how and the what. That is what makes us designers.

If we stop asking these questions we are not designer, but a mere tool!