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Here's a link to a recent odd news story that seems to have little to do with design: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/09/11/cbs-2-investigation-underground-and-illegal-nyc-dinner-parties/ It's about "underground dinner parties" and their regulation compared to the regulation of restaurants and other commercial cooking. One interesting thing to me is that people are less terrorized by the prospect of unregulated cooking, say, at my house when you all come over for dinner (RSVP) than about the same thing done for profit. There seem to be some parallels with the everybody designs/who is a designer? discussions. I think I made the connection for another reason. When graphic designers talk about professional issues, we seem to either compare ourselves to lawyers or plumbers. I suppose that attorneys have a well-established profession and there are more television shows about lawyers than about accountants so that's an obvious model. I don't know if the plumber thing is because it's a business with unsexy connotations but good pay or if it harkens back to Adolph Loos' realizations that plumbers (rather than architects) are the group that has allowed modern civilization and urbanization more than anyone. Anyway, chefs seem to have more in common with graphic designers procedurally than lawyers and plumbers do. We combine stuff that other people produce, sometimes in new and startling ways and sometimes in tried-and-true ways. We do work that we think of as original and creative but would have trouble explaining what part of it is new and we often take most pride in doing common things well. (And, much to our shame, we sometimes forget to give enough credit to the farmers, butchers, and fishmongers and often seem not to understand that the dishwashers and busboys, like Loos' plumbers, are the ones that make it all work.) Gunnar Gunnar Swanson East Carolina University graphic design program http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm [log in to unmask] Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville NC 27858 USA http://www.gunnarswanson.com [log in to unmask] +1 252 258-7006 ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------