What does a designer do?
It seems more and more people these days are designers. Graphic Designers, Web Designers, Flash Designers... but it seems that a large percentage of these are fallout of the 80's "Designer Clothes" syndrome - fashion, never function.. Frankly, I feel that a lot of the "designers" out there never think about design, and are too carried away with their artistic vision.
Designers to me are people who think about the item that is to be produced, and make it work for the target audience. Henry Dreyfuss is one of the designers I idolised. He didn't just think about the visual asthetic of what he was producing, but the whole process. That made him a production designer. He considered all sides of it.
The others, well, you should think of yourself as artists. And if you haven't got a message you are trying to get across, and you aren't producing something which has a function [and that doesn't mean sticking a picture on a t-shirt]. You're not a designer... you're a stylist.
06/07/03 - I just found this article which says what I say a bove in a much more wordy way.
