Andrew Fox

Question – When someone asks you what you do for a living how do you answer them?

“I’m a web designer” I say. Mostly you get a slightly disappointed look when they realise “oh, your one of them!” Now this is just me being snobby but many people go on to explain how they’ve done that in the past and how you can do it on a pc in your bedroom – all you have to do is signup with Geocities (remember them?). Sure, you can but as most of us know there’s more to it than that. Although these days everyone is a designer, right?

So do we deserve a different title? Getting into specifics doesn’t work as few people even know the difference between a designer and a developer. “What, so you don’t even build web sites? What do you do then exactly?” By this time you’ve lost them and going on to justify the fact that XHTML and CSS part of it but then there’s also design, UX, SEO (ZZzzzzz….) will probably obliterate whatever relationship you might be trying to start with that person.

I’ve thought about trying “digital designer” although calling myself that makes me feel a bit pretentious. Surely though as technology and the web becomes more engrained in our lives people will start to understand a bit about what’s involved in creating these systems and the people behind them?

Shallow thoughts but I’d be interested to hear what people think.

Next time I’ll give “digital designer” a go and see how that works!