I read Andy Rutledge’s “Design Professionalism” over this past weekend. I found myself at odds with it right from the start—from the point it tried to establish “rules” of professionalism. But while the ideas put forth were nothing new or revolutionary, the book is better served as a set of guidelines for people who want to go about establishing an autonomous career in general—there is nothing in the book that is specific to a career in design. In fact, the way I see it, things seemed to fall apart when you keep in mind that it’s supposed to be about the field of designing.

I do feel I should put up a disclaimer, however. I don’t design to make a living, but I have designed for people and have been paid for it in the past. The majority of my serious work¹ has been as a part of web-based startups in small teams, as is their nature. I don’t qualify as a “professional”^§§ The Fundamental Characteristics of a Profession
—Design Professionalism by Andy Rutledge according to the rules set down by book, but I’ll get into that a little later.

Designing, like many other careers that stem from a love for the field rather than the promise of a lifestyle, means different things to different people. It all depends on their motivations. For some people—and I believe they are in the minority—it’s about the money, fame and popularity. I call it the “I-want-to-be-a-Rockstar Syndrome”. But for the vast majority, it’s about satisfying a passion and a want to create, to be able to point to something beautiful and say “I made that.”

The deal with following Andy Rutledge’s thoughts on what makes a designer professional^2§§ Pro or Not?
—Design Professionalism by Andy Rutledge is that you’re trying to shoehorn many different types of designers into a fixed list that says you’re a design “professional” if you can check all the attributes off. Take, for example, web type designers and foundries. Most of the time they don’t deal with clients and have almost no accountability (they just make typefaces, it’s up to the user of those typefaces to choose the right one). They probably don’t make a lot of money and licensing deals with services like Typekit probably nets them the majority of their income. You could say “They’re a different type of designer and some aspects of professionalism doesn’t apply to them,” but even you must realise how much of a straw-man argument that is.

But that is just looking at it from a professional’s perspective.

While designing might be a high-skill field, there are some of us who design for the love of designing and not for the money. We take up client work the same as so-called-professionals, go through all the things a so-called-professional who does it to earn his living might do, but we charge less—or nothing at all—because we’re not in it for the money. There is this air that has been going around for a year or two, the renaissance of the design world if you care to look at it that way, that a designer is one of the key individuals responsible for a client’s brand success. Maybe you’ve felt it too. I just think it’s them giving themselves too much credit. If the designer brings a vision that the client didn’t, sure, that may be the case. But it’s wrong to feel important when dealing with clueless clients who don’t understand their own business and what works. That’s a failing of the client, not a superiority of the designer³.

The point that I’m trying to make here, albeit a little crudely, is that talking about “professionalism” in a field driven entirely by motivation is worthless. Are you still a professional if you’re a part of a startup that isn’t earning money? What about the team that created the first version Twitter—would you call them professionals? Idealists like Andy Rutledge will probably say they aren’t, that they’re not professionals but just “technicians”. But is that professionalism or idealism? Maybe if the book was titled “Guidelines for Professionalism in Design”, I would get on board without much question, but laying down a fixed set of rules under the guise of bringing objectivity to one’s opinion is wrong.

At the end of the day, designers aren’t an elite cult that you have to earn the right to join or prove that you’re worthy to call yourself one of them (us?). Every designer who hasn’t reached a certain level of stardom is looked at with prejudiced eyes, and they only have their past laurels (read: portfolio) to speak for them—doesn’t matter how “professional” you try to be. So as long as we’re clear on our motivations and act accordingly, there is no need to take back anything, because we would have never lost it in the first place.