Raúl Santos
Today I found a great post about one of the reasons some industries are so messed up. This post talks about the web design industry in particular but the reasoning applies to a lot of other fields as well.
Here’s an excerpt of Jeff Croft’s “What does it mean to be a “professional” web designer?”
I think at least part of this misunderstanding comes from people mistaking the tools for the job. This seems to happen in other creative industries, as well. People buy a nice digital SLR and decide they’re a photographer. The buy a guitar and call themselves a musician. And, they buy a copy of Photoshop or Dreamweaver and call themselves a web designer. This is a little baffling to me. No one thinks if they have a hammer they’ve got the skills to be a professional carpenter. No one decides they don’t need a doctor if they’ve got a stethoscope of their own. For some reason that I can’t seem to figure out, people believe that if they have the same tools as us — a computer and some software — they can do our jobs. And worse, the clients believe that, too. When a designer is charging $150/hr. and a “designer” is charging $30, they’ll usually pick the cheaper one because they just can’t comprehend what the difference could possibly be.