AWTP

In light of what we dis­cussed on Wednesday both in the group meet­ing and sem­in­ar I wanted to col­lect togeth­er all the things I would like to see in a pro­fes­sion­al body for visu­al com­mu­nic­at­ors. This is very much what I per­son­ally would like to see in a pro­fes­sion­al body so not every­one will agree. It is also very much a draft, not exhaust­ive and as a pro­fes­sion­al body is quite a prag­mat­ic thing to pro­pose I wanted to be ideal­ist­ic in what I think its remit and pur­pose should be. I am refer­ring to it as a con­sti­tu­tion (very American) for want of a bet­ter word and to avoid call­ing it a mani­festo. There are lots of grey edges to some of the state­ments as we dis­cussed as a group but I wanted to make some state­ments based on gen­er­al prin­ciples initially.

Thinking about eth­ics and respons­ib­il­ity in design I was inter­ested in the com­ments Ian breifly made at the end of last Wednesday’s sem­in­ar about what the pur­pose of design is. It was inter­est­ing to note the dis­tinc­tion he made between pro­fes­sion and dis­icpline. Having looked up briefly about what dis­tin­guishes a pro­fes­sion from a vocation.

Wikipedia has this to say:

“A pro­fes­sion is a voca­tion foun­ded upon spe­cial­ised edu­ca­tion­al train­ing, the pur­pose of which is to sup­ply dis­in­ter­ested coun­sel and ser­vice to oth­ers, for a dir­ect and def­in­ite com­pens­a­tion, wholly apart from expect­a­tion of oth­er busi­ness gain”.

The art­icle then goes on later to talk about pro­fes­sion­al bodies:

“Professions are typ­ic­ally reg­u­lated by stat­ute, with the respons­ib­il­it­ies of enforce­ment del­eg­ated to respect­ive pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies, whose func­tion is to define, pro­mote, over­see, sup­port and reg­u­late the affairs of its mem­bers. These bod­ies are respons­ible for the licen­sure of pro­fes­sion­als, and may addi­tion­ally set exam­in­a­tions of com­pet­ence and enforce adher­ence to an eth­ic­al code of prac­tice. However, they all require that the indi­vidu­al hold at least a first pro­fes­sion­al degree before licensure.”

Would it be a good thing if design were to become a prop­er profession?

My feel­ing is yes. This does repeat some of the ideas with have dis­cussed pre­vi­ously but I think the dis­tinc­tion between dicip­line and pro­fes­sion is a key point. If design became a pro­fes­sion and there­fore had a pro­fes­sion­al body, rather than a uni­on, I think it would lend more cred­ib­il­ity and respect to the industry, help to main­tain or raise stand­ards and for cli­ents, cre­ate some account­ab­il­ity. It would also help us address eth­ic­al issues, dis­putes and give sup­port to designers.

I’m not sure how you would go about this and wheth­er it would work and it does raise oth­er ques­tions in turn but I think it is a more prac­tic­al route to address­ing some of the issues relat­ing to the design industry as a whole than anoth­er manifesto.