Core77

Over at SpeakUp, Marian Bantjes posts a piece on our favorite topic these days. It's all great, but here's the paragraph we picked to pique:

The response of most designers is to downplay the active, creative part of their work in favour of the strategic, results-oriented, business-minded part. A scan through most design websites will reveal an emphasis on "forming partnerships," "sound business objectives," "industry leaders," "distilling information," "marketing communications," "story telling," and a great deal more that hints at "creativity" contained in a controlled and mindful environment (i.e. the back room, out of sight). But Graphic Design's embarrassment of its artistic roots threatens to do away with the very thing that makes it unique and valuable. In this sense, the computer becomes the perfect icon for design today, as Design begins to look a lot like what everyone else does in the vast market of business consultancy. As designers increasingly promote themselves primarily as strategists, consultants and business-people first, they do so often by sacrificing the one thing they have that separates them from their clients: the ability to think and express ideas visually. And at some point, you have to wonder: if you look like them, and act like them, and talk like them, and think like them, and use the same tools as they do...well, what the hell would they need you for?

Read the entire post here.