I have found myself recently considering why it is that when tell people what I do that so often the response is “well you have always been artistic” or “You have always had and eye for that”.

Inspired by a family member who, while discussing a project we will be working on together, pulled out the “artistic” card. I got to thinking, if don’t have my own family convinced that what I do is a bit more than adding embellishment or being artistic, then why should I expect my client (our clients) to understand it for more than that.

How can we go about explaining the basics of what we do using general ideas and concepts? How can we do this outside of the client/designer interaction?

The point would not be to teach a client how you might go about calculating line-height or what exact steps you might put into developing the check out process for a complex shopping cart system as you might attempt to do in educating other designers or developers. The point would be to illustrate that just as an electrician wires an extravegant home theater system or an engineer develops a complex road system, we as designers use much more than artistic ability to solve complex problems and develop best routes.

It takes time to learn principles and foundations. It takes careful study of what does and does not work, drawing on experience in the field. It involves continuing education in both what has already been discovered and the technologies being developed in the future.

More importantly it takes the application of the above to careful research and discovery of the problem at hand to develop the best solution.

It is not just a matter of having an eye for it or applying your artistic qualities to a solution, it is careful thought out calculation.

Anyhow my point was not to get into a long discussion about what design is and is not, rather to raise the question of how we might help others to gain a better understanding of the designers job or what it is that we do on a daily basis. In turn making out jobs and possibly our live a little easier, or at least more understood.

(I am just looking for general ideas here, examples would be great to if you happen to leave a comment.)