A Philosophy of Interior Design is a book by Stanley Abercrombie that focuses on the fundamentals of interior design without focusing on current trends or fashion. The book is a comprehensive exploration of the role of interior designers, the role of rooms, windows, and doors in defining the character of interior spaces, and the changing levels of interior spaces such as bedrooms and bathrooms. The book is written in a non-technical manner, avoiding the distractions of fashion and fashion trends.
As the author does not rely on current trends or fashion, the book’s value will be long-lasting. It does not emphasize current trends and fashion, ensuring that the book’s content remains relevant and valuable. The book is published by Routledge in 1990 and is 180 pages long.
The book is a valuable resource for those interested in interior design, as it provides a comprehensive understanding of the principles and techniques that underpin the design process. It is a valuable resource for those seeking to improve their home and work environment without relying on trendy trends or fashion.
In conclusion, A Philosophy of Interior Design is a valuable resource for those interested in the fundamentals of interior design, without relying on current trends or fashion.
📹 This can happen in Thailand
📹 Why Are Designers & Creatives Elitist Jerks?
If you ask designers why they do their job, they’ll usually say it’s because they want to make things that improve people’s lives.
Something I’ve noticed over 20 years working in the arts industry: People who are hard working and genuinely good at what they do tend to be helpful and eager to share everything they know. People who got where are based on luck and connections are toxic jerks who hold on to their handful of tricks like it’s top secrete info, blame others and tear others down.
This is probably a big reason I didn’t pursue graphic design professionally. These kinds of people exist in every kind of workplace, but when it comes to your own art, criticism can feel personal. Not saying that constructive criticism is bad, but when others are overly competitive, it seems like the worst traits of the design world come to fruition. I’m glad the Internet and other resources have become available for artists of every medium, because even though it isn’t perfect, there is definitely a more accepting and diverse community of people out there.
I actually went to an art school with a department/major that specialized in designing cars, and you’d constantly hear horror stories from the students about how insanely toxic the environment was. It was a regular occurrence for teachers to tear down student’s work, designs they spent months working on, and toss them into the trash before openly tearing them down and humiliating them in front of the entire class. It shouldn’t come off as a surprise when I say that department had a high drop-out rate. If you’ve ever watched the movie Whiplash, it was like that but multiplied by tenfold. The worst part about it was that the higher-ups knew about the abuse these students were being put through by their teachers, and continued to say nothing about it for the sake of saving their reputation. Fucking scumbags.
I’m a neurosurgeon and people in surgical specialties have a reputation for having an inflated sense of self importance that distorts how they see the world and themselves in it resulting in temper tantrums when reality pokes its nose in. In fact it’s only a few individuals that are like that, doctors are generally caring calm people (and so are surgeons) but those jerks are so successful in spreading their nasty germs that the behaviour becomes normalised and widespread and we go through contortions trying to figure out why, like you did, when the deceptively simple answer is a-holes and jerks exist in nature, they are loud and visible and fields that involve confidence scams attract them. If you look at the personal lives of the people you mention, i would not be surprised to find that being a jerk is not limited to their work, it’s how they live their lives.
I’m in second year of architecture school and I feel like this is probably the most challenging time of my life, trying to balance your personal wishes with the demands of your group. Also, I learned what it feels like to be around actual selfish jerks who really live in their microcosmos and make group work even harder. Thanks to you, I finally feel like I’m not alone with these thoughts!
There is this UX designer called Melody Koh who writes UX career articles on Medium and if “Elitist jerk” had a Wikipedia article, she would be in the feature photo 😂She wrote a very controversial one titled “Still can’t get a UX job? Give up.” She is a total gatekeeper who thinks that unless you have a portfolio of work and experience up to a completely unreasonable standard for a newcomer, you don’t have the right to work in this industry and you’re a fool if you think otherwise. The UX industry has a real aversion to hiring intern and junior level talent because they look for unicorn candidates that can run projects on their own, instead of building talent from the ground up. It’s like being priced out of a stock.
It’s so interesting you mentioned so many things on why I’ve moved from Architecture into scenic design. I just finished my first full production and seeing how many people it takes to execute the show is humbling. I was just one piece in a big system of people who made it happen. I love the work I did, but it was the lighting, the costumes, the acting, and the crew that made it magical. I never want to forget that.
this article needs to be watched on repeat by anyone who wants to be serious about this line of work. Thankfully my professor of design history and design critique frequently went out of his way to engrain these concepts into his students, but they’re not near as common sense as they should be. Great work!
The moment you talked about the designer ripping people’s ideas off of a wall, it took me back to art school. Particularly for article game art and design. I’ve constantly heard chairs, instructors, and presidents of the school say “this student over here is the smartest student we have” in front of other students. The dean of the school was observing a character design class I was in where he swung his arm saying “all of this is shit” in a class that…well wasn’t really teaching us much. That mentality is seen in the educational process as well. Hell, even in high school art classes.
I am a custom cabinet maker, so what I do for a living is essentially design. Sadley most of the interior designers I come across think that design is all about prancing around like Meryl Streep in the Devil wears Pradda. I am usually amazed by how predictable an uninteresting most of the ideas they come up with are. For me personally the design process is about figuring out what my client’s happy space is then finding a way to build it. I am really just helping the client’s ideas materialize. Right now I am working on a dinning room that looks like it is out of a Guilermo Del Torro movie, and I am really enjoying it.
I think there’s a useful distinction to be made between kindness and encouraging high (er) standards. The flip side is the junior creative who can’t handle the truth about their work without their feelings getting hurt in an inefficient way, requiring coddling by others and studio inefficiencies. Everybody is going to experience the frustration of blocked goals and has to be able to handle that maturely— not taking critiques too personally AND not letting it spill over into counterproductive expressions. Drama happens, is generally not helpful, so being able to manage your own ego driven issues will make you a better creative regardless of rank. That it’s not always possible is part of the job. The job eventually reveals each persons weakness that way. After a little practice, work relationships can allow for a wide range of expression without anybody taking it too personally. Always a little bit but in check.
As a student of architecture, I always used to think that good design is for all. It solves problems and makes life better. After working on projects with all types of budgets (low to high), I observed that my efforts were duly paid on projects with high budgets, and I had to work extra hard to make a low budget project happen. I think that’s why a lot of designers want to be elite, to attract high value clients. Clients with low budget do deserve a good design, but designers have a duty to take care of their own well-being, too. My on-field experience made me think about concentrating more on high value designs, but your article inspired me to keep working on the low budget ones too. Talking about why elitist designers have a specific design type, I hope that it doesn’t happen in India. Here, some people like minimalism while some are maximalists. All types of design are welcomed by someone or the other, that’s why cities here look a bit chaotic, but individually good.
This really touched on my college experience in industrial design. Not only the “designing for designers” part but the eurocentric POV many professors and peers spoke from. It can really mess with your head when a design professor rips your ideas apart for no reason meanwhile they don’t even know how to do 3d CAD or set anything up for manufacturing and at the same time championing a designer who made a pintrest idea look a little bit different. I like to take chances and think about the average user thats needs a product but I guess designers don’t like that lol.
When people are fixated with how things look they run a high risk of becoming superficial and snobbish. The fashion industry is an excellent example. It’s literally an entire industry obsessed with how things look on the surface as opposed to their substance. That’s why people in fashion often seem cold. They have absolutely no interest in personality or character. It’s all about the surface. This pattern emerges in all aesthetic crafts but is particularly pronounced in fashion and can also manifest acutely in design.
I can only agree. I give public talks and have a gift in convincing others in conferences. Sometimes I rewatch my talks and cringe at the small lies like “Wow, I actually believed that at that moment” It’s SO easy to give small lies when you get good at speaking just to make pieces fit or a conversation to continue in the direction you want it to. You can delude yourself to act like what you say is real and tell the same stories so often that you can start just forgetting you made that up at some point in some conversation.
This is an excellent sample of why I switched to Hunan-centric design. UX and CX design are always focused on the human we are seeking to serve. That means that we can replace that egocentric conversion with empathy, and that insecurity in the presentation with testing and results. Human-centric design has also elevate the design department outside the shadow of marketing KPIs, and ultimately give designers a sit on the table to participate in the development of modern business and Brands
The problem with most designers is that they are very weak in real technical matters and real knowledge of execution process (construction or manufacturing), they ended up just relying on “artistic flair”, “artistic licence”, and showmanship to get what they wanted through, by even bulldozing their ways, over actual reality and real knowledge.
Design is the one area in product development that is qualitative, all other aspects are quantitative. Often times, everyone critiquing your work (non-designers) have numbers to back up their arguments. I think this makes a lot of people feel like they need to dominate the room to give their ideas a chance. The issue is that when you throw your weight around like this, people feel like there is no room for criticism and probably also began to see you as a jerk. This keeps you from learning to be a better designer and alienates you. You may force this concept through but all your future work suffers. I feel like the best remedy for this is to listen, learn, and realize that everyone is trying to make the product better. I may get shot down by engineering, sales, finance, etc. this time around, but if I listen, my next design will be better.
The dino taco holder is brilliant. Its designer descended from heaven, and heralded a golden age! Actual Japanese lowercase design is humble and functional. I have been working with designers in the software industry for almost a decade now, and I have ALWAYS stood at their desks and engaged with their process live, especially when it comes to reminding them of what happens when somebody interacts with their design; in my experience, if they actually know what they’re doing they’ll respond in kind by placing reasonable demands and constraints on the behavior of the software; if they don’t know what they’re doing they’ll lash out and put people down.
The dinosaur taco holder came on screen and I immediately thought, wow, amazing! seems obvious now that I’ve seen it, which is a sure sign of greatness. I hope that they sell a complete range of dinosaur shaped home products, such as knife block, chairs, coffee table, lamps, clock etc, perfect thing for the dinosaur house that I live in in my imagination
I’ve worked both freelance and in Design Agencies and have seen some of (but not qiuet to the extent you have shared) what you mention at the start of the article. I would say though that I’ve been lucky enough to have Creative directors that are nurturing and have helped develop me into the designer I am today. I would also say though that the obsession with perfectionism is something that, like you pointed out, can actually ruin the design process. I always think if you give something for instance 8 hours of you’re time and you get it to 95% of what it needs to be, does an extra 2/3/4+ hours actually get it to 100%? or does it even add another 1% to that total. This is where perfectionism can demoralise and strip the fun out of the creative process.
Your commentary on design awards and the designs that get celebrated reminded me of my own feelings when I see a lot of “sustainable” design concepts that get celebrated. Looking at them with a practical engineering background, so many are impossible wishful thinking wrapped up in pretty renderings. And people talk about them as innovative and meaningful contributions, without any questions about whether they would work in reality.
I have worked in and out of the art/design world for 30 years and this is absolutely true. It’s long been a trope that these fields are cut-throat and competitive, but what that means is that lots of people within it are constantly and exhaustingly trying to be accepted by their peers or audience, to the point of mutual alienation and very lonely and superficial social relationships – all in the pursuit of Beauty. Just walk into a gallery opening and feel the icy winds of judgment, about your pants, about your earrings, about your most recent work…. I have a love-hate relationship with my own profession and have periodically dropped out because I’m not thick skinned enough.
LOL. This is a really good presentation. The presenter is smart. Complaints are valid. A bit of drama also works well. Designers are expected to be a bit “different”, and outstanding designers are often expected to be “mad”. And it is this bit of madness that often separates greatness from mediocrity. In the UK there’s so much mediocrity. The buildings in London are ugly, the transport system is broken and horrid, people are surrounded by ugliness and mediocrity. So naturally we want something “better”.
This reminds me of final Game of Thrones season. Half of the audience said they couldn’t see anything on screen as it was too dark. The cinematographer responded by saying people don’t know how to tune their TVs properly, not that his show was graded poorly. Bear in mind his show is literally designed to be shown on modern TVs, how they currently are now. Meaning he is employed to fit the consumers needs, not vice versa, yet he managed to blame the consumer anyway.
As a consumer I want the best aesthetics for my budget. As a person that worked in a design office I was proud to design things that other designers, pm, line builders wanted. We had a lot of success and we had some failures. Unless you worked in the field it can seem odd. You spot on with a lot of things in your article!
So many good points. Especially hearing that a concept is basically a lie that you try to sell. Though I would phrase it differently at least in my mind and you said it as well. Having confidence while not loosing your humanity is the key. Giving respect and looking for a good solution do not necessarily have to fight with each other. You’ll probably loose many ideas and concepts on the way but that feels like a way of trial and error. Maybe it has to do with the reality check. If we would build a lot of concepts that would and could cost a lot of money and effort. I notice this is not a definitive comment. Just a bit of talking points. Anyways thanks for the insights. I am curious what will come in the future. 🙂
When it comes to creatives, the internet is remarkable when it comes to separating those in it for the money, or the status from those in it for the art and craft, because there is no reason whatsoever to be against the democratization of a skill that leads to opportunity and elevation of the craft by allowing people without money, or connections to learn and demonstrate their talent.
These are good points to remember. Elon Musk, Anna Wintour, Kanye West, Stanley Kubrik, most classical conductors, Frank Lloyd Wright, Steve Jobs, etc… the list goes on and on. One reasons why I’m hesitant to continue pursuing interior design and what I’ve seem really puts me off in terms of toxic work culture at the high end of the industry. IMO an unfortunate amount of people at the top of any industry who are toxic jerks might suffer from clincially diagnosable Narcissistic Personality Disorder as controversial as that might be to say….
Personally, I think that an inferiority complex, especially in the school context, also plays a very big role in this problem. The art school I went to had the slogan “So you want to be an artist? It’s going to be hard, but it’s going to be worth it.” And the teachers regularly made statements about how an art education is supposedly at least as difficult as, say, studying law, maybe even more difficult because “law students just have to memorise some information while an art student has to work hard every day to develop their talent” (their words, not mine). There was also a lot of complaining about how society looks down on artists when our skills are needed for countless things. It was a breeding ground for arrogance and self-pity. Worst of all, this mentality created a space where teachers can freely terrorise their students without any resistance. It was awful.
I’ve been working in TV for the past 15 years and I can say that people in creative fields usually lack knowledge about how to be a good employer or boss and therefore often have no professional hiring practices. The focus is on their (alleged) creativeness. People with inflated egos found companies and hire people who are like them (jerks). This leads to arbitrary decision making, pressure on employees, bullying, overtime, lots of stress, low wages (sorry, but you’re working with geniuses!), unhealthy work environments, etc. I guess most creative people are scared of not being exceptional. That would smash their inflated egos. But as long as this makes others suffer, it’s a problem. In my opinion, this has gotten a bit better due to young people not wanting to accept BS work conditions anymore but there is still a long way to go.
I love this article. Thank you for making it. 😊 It’s interesting to see the same patterns cropping up everywhere, including the effect of phone cameras and the internet to increase inclusiveness, creative freedom, and diversity. My impression of another creative area, the visual arts, is that there is a huge divide in the minds of ‘regular’ people between the fine arts (‘real art’) and all the other arts (like media illustration, kids illustration, poster/branding/product design, online content creator, or being a self-employed niche artist). And broadly speaking, those areas seem to attract very different people with different mindsets and different goals. But also with different audiences. So an arrogant outgoing stereotypical visionary artist may do well with non-artist media and rich customers, but maybe not on social media. Conversely, a helpful collaborative explorative artist may do better on youtube than with big media looking for the extravagant, or rich clients looking for an expensive yet impersonal investment.
It’s because many creatives develop a god complex, especially if they experience some success. In my opinion the antidote, if you can do it, is to realize that you don’t so much “own” your creations. Your ideas don’t really wholey originate in your brain, rather you discover them through a process of exploration. What the brain is doing is making a lot of connections, in which each node (or perhaps literally group of neurons) is a concept learned from the external world, not generated from within. I think I came upon this perspective from years of playing the piano and composing music, when I realized that there are a finite combination of keys and chords, very few of which that actually sound good together. Of course, we should still celebrate the composers that have found beautiful music, but the point is that the music already existed in the universe and they were the ones to discover it. Does anyone own the C-minor to A-major chord progression? Was it the first person to have found that those chords sound epic together? To me this is actually empowering because it means that you can externalize this process to develop strategies for innovating new inventions, music, stories, etc. by listing several concepts, generate every combination of those concepts, then discovering the possibilities. Anyway, hopefully that is an enlightening, helpful, and not angering idea for any creatives reading this. It’d be interesting if you, Design Theory, made a article on this topic of, to what extent do we own our ideas vs.
Without wanting to sound too much of a member of the inverse eletist club… but I really felt this article was super pertinent and on the nose… I liked the statement that the internet is slowly killing elitism in the design world… I would unfortunately add to that; the internet is also slowly killing innovation and variety, Pushing us all shop one unanimous sameness. Design is over we are hive mind. Ps great article!
And this is exactly why I quit industrial design, despite having the highest grades in the class I was in, and being the first in my class to get a job contract in a biz with good pay. I am, deep down, an artist who wants to create things both beautiful and useful for people in general to connect with/make use of. But when you are there is all about what makes more money, and even if you present a good project that is profitable it is never “attracting enough consumers”. A lot of businesses don’t want just to grow, they want to grow fast, even if they have the currently politically acceptable you think they are more “friendly” and “caring” towards you than they actually are. I *hated* having a hand in that at all, so I stopped. I felt like I was being paid to lie, corrupting my artwork in the process, and then had smile about it. It made me sick.
Thank you for talking about this. Being in Architecture, I’ve wrestled with this topic since the begining. In college, we are taught about the highest form of design by star architects. But when driving around town you notice reality and real building and living conditions. I never had the courage to speak up as a student and had a deep sense that most of society and Architecture function in parallel realities. It really is a club and talking about low income housing for example, will get you lauged at in college and get no respect by mainstream firms, even though that’s part the majority of society.
I think another reason why jerks can be successful in art and design is that quality is highly subjective. So being good at convincing people is a major factor when it comes to self-promotion. If you want to know who’s better at building cars, you can compare objective metrics like speed and durability. What do you do if you want to know who’s a better designer? You ask people what they think. So if you can influence what people think, you’re golden.
I was terrified to enter the art and design fields because all of the “good” artists who I experienced who had “made” it were the exact people you are describing on this article. It took me years of doing professional work for clients to realize that i actually did know what I was doing after all and that most of the high end art world was just a fancy tax shelter
There is a study on people in creative jobs and how high they score on the dark triad in psychology: narcissisum, machiavellianism and psychopaty. Architect scored the highest on all three. Also in architecture they still think that its a male type of job even though more then half of students are women but only 1/3 of them get a job after they get a degree. They harass and bully people at work and they also think that stealing others ideas and even drawings is a normal thing.
I think their are two components: the feedback loop of success which reinforces and amplifies underlying personality traits, the inherently destructive and antisocial nature of creativity. What drives you to be creativity is dissatisfaction with the status quo. If you are successful at dismantling that and replacing it with your own ego centric vision, you are going to repeat that behavior.
Some “artistic” types truly believe they are born geniuses sent by the divine to grace the world with their MAJESTY & VISION and the world owes them recognition, comfortable wealth &, all the preferred pleasure they want + a thank you we are not worthy (most will never be even a tenth that good but it would take an act of God to convince any of those divas of the fact)
I think it’s very difficult to make great and cheap design (the eames lounge chair was once celebrated as an icon of democratic design and now costs over 8k$ 🤣). Designers try to make great design which is almost always expensive and consequently elitist. The wooden bird is the perfect example, you could make it super mega cheap in plastic material, hollowed and flimsy but its much cooler if you do it out of a heavy wood
In defense of designers and creatives being jerks, having to deal with people who have horrible or generally uneducated taste is EXHAUSTING. Most design does have to appeal to the client, end user, whatever, and they always have opinions that are just poor choices. Good design is subjective, but only to a point. There are elements that really aren’t particularly subjective, like cohesion, balance, legibility, whether the design delivers on its aim, etc. I work for a company where the overall direction doesn’t have much to do with my personal taste. (Spoiler alert: That’s how most people make real money as creatives. There’s nothing wrong with selling out so you can use your free time and resources in soul satisfying ways.) I’m not super personally invested in any of the design choices. If they want purple instead of blue, or want more traditional, or want something edgier, that’s fine with me. It drives me up a wall when people want actively bad design choices though. I hate when people want to have too much going on, especially text. I hate when people ask for things that don’t go together. (I’m constantly saying that cohesion is really the only hill I’m willing to die on.) I hate when people mistake blandness for elegant simplicity. (They aren’t the same. Elegant simplicity looks like a deliberate choice. Blandness looks like someone took the path of least resistance and didn’t want to make a choice.) When people complain that designers are jerks/egotistical/etc. I like to remind them that living in a world where “everyone’s opinion matters” is exhausting.
They’re elitist jerks because they are better, or at least different. Bo Jack Horseman… I started perusal it 3 or 4 times before I “got it” and could finish the first season. I showed it to my daughter, and by the time the opening credits were rolling on the first episode, she was standing in the living room yelling “THIS IS ART!”. She was eleven years old. She was right, but she’s a creative and she knows instantly what is good. I take a few tries. She IS better than me.
I remember when I was studying Animation in college there was a student who had excellent work but she was an ass hole and elitist towards everyone else, I remember when she had to work on the group thesis project most of the people in her group left after a few weeks and joined another group because she was Soo pretentious and nasty. towards everyone
The end is very relevant to my experience – I had experience in web design at an old school communication agency with a very arrogant and competitive culture. Then I changed to the exact same job but within an IT engineering culture company: people were so much nicer, and I think we served our clients better.
Ive been a graphic designer for 25 years. You have to remember that your clients are not trained in the arts, visual communication and how the process works. The feedback they give is the direct result of “likes” and “dislikes”. That’s why they usually give bad direction, input and frequently say things like “make my logo bigger”, “I don’t like that photo”, “there’s too much white space”, etc. That alone can turn designers into major jerks, outside of their inflated egos…
This opens a window into the psychology of elitism in other areas such as scientific publication and ‘peer review’, amongst religious theologians or socialist philosophers, as examples. It can even be applied to societal elitism and bandwagoning that can lead to incoherent but pervasive ideas across a society. Very interesting!
Oh could you please do a article on the exclusivity of craft and quality? I work ultra high end architectural metal work in the bay area and have so many thoughts on it. I’ve made details for clients that would’ve been available cheaper, faster, and more consistently in off the shelf items but had to make them by hand just because the client wanted something made just for them. We haven’t talked much since I got out of CCA but I hope you’re doing well!
i used to be a full time designer in the past. i can relate some of the anger from good designers. it’s simply the expectation thing. good designers have the obsession of seeing things in aesthetic order. if whoever works with them does not understand this, then they would certainly do things in a “messy” way, hence, good designer will not be happy abt it.
My favourite classes in design school were Graphic Design History and Colour and Design, got about a year in and concluded, it made me a more technically solid artist but after 17 years in body piercing, and moonlighting in kitchen jobs, I decided focus on menial jobs to pay the bills and make art and music on the side, I am a perfectionist but am pretty critical of my own finished product.
I agree so much with what’s been said in this article. I’ve come across my fair share of egotistical creatives who span over different industries (photography, animation & graphic design in my experience). It was a shock to me seeing this when I was in art school, and later on at work. But at the same time, I’ve also met plenty of creatives who are so kind, wise and what my country calls “tidak kedekut ilmu” (someone who is not stingy with their knowledge aka NOT a gatekeeper). These people are what keeps the community alive.
I love your content. You leave no bases uncovered. It’s inclusive and considerate, yet realistic and pragmatic. I’m not a designer by trade but the way with which you approach these topics with endless alternatives and counter arguements within the topics you are discussing is brilliant in my opinion. Bravo.
Regarding that scene with Shelley Duvall, and how you said endless revisions can make the final product worse: When I first watched The Shining, before I knew anything about Kubric, I found the baseball bat/stairway scene to be confusing, specifically b/c Shelley looks so exhausted. I thought the scene would read better if she looked more scared and full of adrenaline. You’re totally right btw, people don’t have to be tortured to make good art.
You captured my experience exactly. I did a double degree with the former in design and the later in computer science. Near the end of my design degree I had this uneasy feeling of my personality becoming more and more pretentious and concieted because of the nature of the work and the attention to detail required in places most people would never even think of. When I switched to software engineering, my personality morphed too. It was more rigid, and methodological and I started to feel like a normal person again funnily enough. I like the perspective each has given me, but I could never shake the feeling that the moral values in design were fundamentally flawed because of greed.
I will happily and jerkily point out that just about every building Frank Lloyd Wright designed has leaked. Given that one of the defining traits of “civilization” is making structures which protect people (and their stuff) from the elements, this particular shortcoming of FLW puts him one rung lower in the list of historical greats.
Great article super insightful, and eye opening. As a chef I see this same thing in the top of our field. I was talking to my partner about why don’t we see more from afro centric cultures being represented. Even the top of the food world we design our plates in a very dieter rams style. Hell I’ve taken ideas from him directly. We’re working hard on trying to listen to nature when designing a dish a without being a diorama
Sounds like hell. Literally. You’d have to kill all the human parts of yourself to survive in that world. No wonder so many are miserable. I live as a recluse after working in the city. I collect disability. There was no warmth or love. Rather flip burgers than hang around so and so wearing the latest and greatest 🙄🤚😭
I think it also depends on where you’re from. Studying architecture in Italy, especially in older/traditional schools like in Naples, can be very toxic, professors will never tell you that you did a good work, instead when they’re satisfied it they’ll say “it functions”, they’ll never admit they actually like your design because “liking is subjective” (and of course they could never praise a student and loose that aura of power they hold). The thing is.. to a certain extent it works. When I went out in Erasmus and saw how other students behaved I was shocked to see how much they still relied on the professor’s advice and were a lot more superficial that I was, so I suppose that the “terror” of my first years allowed me to develop a level of confidence and independence in my work (and mostly the ability to work fast and good because of how much was demanded). However while I think that it can be useful in the first years, what I never liked about Italian education is that this behavior never ends, you can be a 5th year student with experience and they’ll still treat you like shit, because at the end of the day they’re the professor and you’re not. So that made me realize that more than an educational device, their arrogance was just part of their character. And that also contributes to generate a lot of arrogant people because that’s how we’ve been educated, and eventually the ones that aren’t broken by the system end up being elitist jerks (who eventually succeed)
I can relate to creatives – I’m a creative. I’m an introvert, when I come out of my shell, it has to be for damn good reasons. If I perform, it’s ALL of me, head to toe & back again. I have to be selective because I won’t give ME to just anyone or for any cause. This is more than an elite issue, but merely ‘do they deserve what I bring to the table?’ I think most of us will say ‘maybe’…
The older I get, the more clubs I discover and how the rich always invent jobs where they make fortunes while doing nothing while people that work 12 hours per day and contribute to society are starving. Every day more of this system is obvious, the rich gate every single domain where you get rich with zero effort and then they use them to show how hard working they are. The fashion and the art exist the way they do today so that the 80% of the artists, that happend to have have zero talent and come for rich families, can say they are not parasites on society and that they worth to drink wine and travel while the rest of us die in our workplaces…
Great article! I’ve been an elitist before—in fact I’ve had to fight the urge to say something elitist and petty in three meetings over the past two weeks. I’d like to expand on your comments about collaboration and problem solving. Usually the person who has the problem that needs solving is the client. The client writes the checks. Collaborate with them.
Hey another great article! As much as I love cool vehicles, I hate that that industry only serves very few, very wealthy people, I hate that craftsmanship has become something only the elite can afford, and I am going to fight against that in my design career. I really don’t want to be an elitist-jerk designer, I think this can be overcome by taking genuine interest in those around you and maybe talking up the good qualities of peers can help, lifting each other up instead of trying to climb over each other. Thanks again for that presentation you gave to the gravity sketch ambassadors, we met there and you gave me some really helpful advice.
The awards thing really reminds me of the grammys. Also in the 17 & 1800’s the European music community were extremely condescending and treated music theory like it was algebra or some set of absolute rules that if you made music that didn’t exactly follow them it wasn’t actually music. That’s completely untrue. Music theory is like a language, and like English where words are added to the dictionary all the time we can figure out new ideas in regards to music theory. Also like a language we are able to understand musical concepts and utilize them in a similar way to how we learn to understand others and talk before we learn how to read and write.
being a creative is a unique value proposition. if you produce what all creatives can why the fuck should anybody bother with you. Art is an expressions and hence filled with passion. to appreciate art you need to know ‘the lore’ behind it. Most people are not creative, they do not understand ‘the lore’, the effort and the skills required to create anything. Art means so much more that what it seems. Again a respectable creative offers something unique that nobody else can and pull off, hence the ego.
I think subconsciously they know they’re not necessary for society the way a plumber or a doctor or a firefighter is, so when they find success they attempt to justify their privileged place in society by convincing themselves that they are better and deserve it, the same way actors, sports stars, and other superfluous people do. They’re just noticed less.
Corporate creativity IS brutal. In my experience, people that are technically and creatively skilled are swamped in iterative goose chases passed down by less skilled “project managers”. Simply being skilled at the actual work even makes you a target to ladder climbers. Many people think the work takes no effort and that being asked any question is some how procrastinating rather than project planning. It SUCKS. lol. The job is more just translating other people’s creativity into an actual product by using things they clients don’t even see. Any elitism is just frustration from not being able to follow common sense professional practices to get the job done, and having to be a babysitter for someone who comes up with a new thing to change every time they take a shower.
I’m an aerospace design engineer and while my design process is a lot different than others, the design that gets manufactured is the one that works (structurally/functionally) while also manufacturable/maintainable. I think why designers have such pride is because we literally turn our imaginations into reality. To denounce a design is to insult a piece of our selves.
I think to succeed as an artist you need to have a certain level of delusional, performative self confidence. Bc if you don’t, the industry will chew you up and spit you out and leave you emotionally and sometimes even physically wrecked. So much of the industry is just about grinding and grinding and grinding, and being told “no this sucks” over and over and over. It wears on people.
As a carpenter and home builder, I have dealt with a lot of designers. And I’ve learned that no matter how confident you may act the people that know the industry can see right through it. If somebody designs a house that won’t hold up to the stressors, a carpenter will know that ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than a designer who doesn’t understand the concepts he designs. Like somebody who’s never been in construction designing a house, you have to understand the concepts but also the load-bearing walls, Etc. There’s a lot to know. But if you call somebody out on a missing post with a floating beam, instead of just owning up to it they try to justify it. It’s sad. The furniture industry is full of horrible designs that people proudly display
lol I have no children but I own and love my Dino taco holders 😂 that said, I’m a professional comicbook artist (30 years) – I also had careers in the theatre and fashion industry… this topic has always weighed in my heart- the drive for my art and career to be healthy, enjoyed and appreciated… without being a turd blossom 🤓 or drawing superheroes 😜 – i enjoyed your perspective ☺️ It gives me hope & inspiration that being a compassionate creative is groovy and to keep growing 🌻
This is kind of why i don’t like art school, not because of the money, but because if you are unlucky, you’ll get that one teacher that doesn’t like creativity and only want you to do as told. This stifles people and might put off others that actually wanna do that art genre. it’s kinda like gatekeeping.
Past a certain point, improvements stop generating any added value but keep generating costs. So eventually you may end up with a product which is close to perfection according to a very engaged (and thus subjective) group but which looks just ‘meh’ and overpriced to the rest of the world. Many industries have already understood this and implemented practices to prevent that from happening but apparently not the creative ones. I remember when the company I used to work for invested a sh*tton of money into redesigning their office to encourage people to go back from home office after the pandemic. From aesthetics perspective, the end result was propably ‘correct’ but for the employees it looked just like any other open space in the city. Eventually people who preferred to work in the office came back to the office (as they would anyway but now they were frustrated because the company preferred to invest in overpriced design that nobody asked for instead of giving them a raise), and people who preferred to work from home resigned and found jobs at companies with home office option. This is why feedback-driven projects are always a better option. There’s a lower risk of investing a lot of resources just to gain nothing in return. Hearing ‘no’ is normal in every industry and you don’t have to be egotistical to handle it. Actually, in many cases you can turn a ‘no’ into a constructive discussion.
Didn’t watch the article yet but just saying…..We’re jerks because we put a lot of thought into engineering products that simplify our own lives and when others don’t recognize the value of practicality of our designs we assume they are idiots….and it’s why we become elitist and end up catering to high end clients who celebrate our ingenuity! Btw….thanks for a article I watched of yours yesterday….(can’t recall which one) where you mentioned that new ideas are often introduced by designers who have nothing to lose. At 53, I’m there so be on the lookout for Mychelle Design, an unconventional approach to clothing engineering and production😂
As a designer it’s more about imagination and many people lack imagination or have a level of spacial understanding or imagination level or 4 or 5 while the designer is looking at a level of 1 or 2. In our design school we have a saying to our students. Our instructors will read between the lines. Most creative instructors look at your rough sketches will look at the imaginative possibilities. Everyone has an elitist perspective even non designers it’s not creative. From an educationists perspective most designers who are elitists are failed designers and even failed instructors. Elitist attitude may seem confidence to non designers but the that attitude can be showed through body language it doesn’t need elitism. The Internet definitely has improved the perception and removed elitism and people are being more inclusive and you can get more feedback. It’s a very good and positive start but it will take time to global financial independence over the Internet countries in developing areas are slowly coming to terms but it will take future decades to come to the same level as developed countries and economies.
@6:00 “From a branding and advertising perspective, it’s easier to point to a single person than a team” There’s an interesting inversion to this – Game design. At least in as much as marketing towards normies. In game design, both physical and digital, there used to be superstar names that always got pushed. Gary Gygax, Steve Jackson, Lord British, Sid Meier, John Romero, Peter Molyneux, etc, etc, etc. The marketing used to really push these names hard. This has mostly gone by the wayside today. Look at a list of the 25 or so most popular games right now and not even one of them has a designer name in the title like ‘sid meier’s pirates’. You mostly can find out who the designers are but it’s just not generally pushed like it used to be. And you know what? Most of the time that you do see it happen, it’s kinda like seeing the rolling stones. Old relics that should have stopped putting their faces out there a long time ago. Just food for thought.
Enjoyable upload, but to define the open-ended methodology of creative ID as lying, bullshitting is way ott. As a retired ID engineer/futurist my surroundings were full of narsist idiots, especially in the ‘lonely’ top of (my) corporate world. Success didn’t correlate with my weirdness, nor my sympathy, more shrewd time/place of you(r team) effort in the clients way of thinking! Money as well as a good life(now) follows by default but don’t make friends within your profession! Its the shadow thats relevant. Like lambs, its endearing to watch novel designers…. welcome in this new brave world.
You can also see this with a lot of those copyright maximalists who see themselves as above everyone else and that only they should have any rights. And fittingly, those same people seem dead set on destroying the internet to stop any kind of competition. And more on topic, you can also see this in the gaming space when you look at someone like the creator of Last of Us part II who really should be taken off his high horse, especially when you compare with the more eccentric creator of the Drakengard/Nier series who is far more humble, even self deprecating at times.
Ive gained a lot from learning what taking this “eliteist” attitude looks like in the context of Business Management, and its helped me … but im hitting a career wall, because I’m simply not willing to sh1t on all of my peers/staff to get further ahead. I’ve got all that I can out of putting this face on for 2 decades.
Craftsmanship has ALWAYS been expensive. Nothing has changed in that regard. The people youre talking about who can only afford cheap crap that will quickly fall apart, werent buying these long lasting amazing products instead. Those people just werent buying or owning shiiiiiiittttttt. I think people forget that. And how economies actually worked. The great long lasting stiff youre referring to in the past, was just as unaffordable. There was just not many cheap alternatives. So they had to save their money and get very very modest shit in both style and quantity. Sure, your couch will last longer, but it took you years to afford it, and irs rhe only one you’re getting lol. So nah, cheap crap has allowed more people to simply own things once out of reach. A dining room table is a great example of this
On my first interview at an advertising agency, the Creative Director completely destroyed my portfolio. No constructive criticism, he just went through my work and said “trash, trash, trash, trash. You have no idea what you are doing. Your work is horrible.” Lol. SMH. I ended pleading my case to the CEO, and got hired as an intern. Fortunately, I got better, and my career in design worked out.
designers are elititst jerks because they come from an elite background and are either too dumb or too lazy to do something meaningful in their life or stuff that actually takes alot of focus/attention. thats why they get the easiest degree possible (arts/design) and create unnecessary impractical things they can sell to their rich family and friends to keep their social class. exspecially arts has become a moneylaundering operation where sexual offerings, connections or simply family ties decide about the success of an artist (with a few exceptions).
They are at the top because they are self-interested. I’ve never seen anyone at the top of anything who isn’t self-interested. And you know what? Good for them. If they’re a jerk, well they’re capable of devaluing your work only to steal it as their own, so you have to actually have faith in your stuff. Being at the top doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk, it’s just some successful people are arrogant jerks. 11:28 Well no shlt 😂 If you want to break the mold, you have to fit in it first. How else are you going to break the darn thing? Diplomacy is the way, not violence.
There’s a lot of great comments here. I think another BIG reason for creatives to become jerks is that our society holds those jerks up, and creates a toxic loop where people think that to be a successful creative they also NEED to be an insufferable jerk… ahem, “creative genius” who is not understood by mere mortals. Forgive me if I missed this comment already in here. There are a LOT of good things to read here.
I love the Bauhaus movement both in the Germany and the USA. And I think the movement is interesting to examine in this topic. I will give two anecdotes. But first I will state that the Bauhaus was largely founded on very old school socialist principles of providing quality aesthetic design to the common people in an industrial era. The first anecdote is Moholy Nagy at IIT. Light industrialists encourage Nagy to teach so they could benefit from innovative design. But Nagy went through many struggles because he was very encouraging of students to explore design challenges that seemingly had no immediate commercial application, he was very encouraged of exploration. Because of this he was chastised by a withdrawal of funding which was eventually restored. But there was a censoring by capitalist interests of his unconventional approach. The next story is Mark Stam. Stam stayed in East Germany and was at the Hochschule Weißensee and the communist party did not like Bauhaus ideas. Their excuse was that the working class really wanted highly ornate hand carved bourgeoisie like furniture (ironic) furniture that represented wealth. Stam launched a protest against the communist bureaucracy for intellectual and artistic freedom. He eventually left to the Netherlands, but his protest did win in his absence. The DDR did allow that aesthetic freedom eight years later. But here is the moral of the story. Great design is elitist, just as great art is elitist. And the most democratic design movement meaning design for the masses was thwarted by both capitalists and communists.
Elitism is good overall. not everybody should become a great designer, or even a designer at all. I don’t like the word “Exclusionary”. It’s a very stupid and loaded way to say something more accurate: Selective. Yes, the creative process is selective. Comparing the Stark design to the plastic cheap stuff in not genuine because both objects don’t have the same public and it’s a good thing! for those who buy the Stark stuff they would discriminate the plastic stuff as ugly and unaesthetic, and for the people who enjoy the plastic stuff, they will exactly have the same opinion as you,that the steak design is pretentious! The very act of behaving a preference for this or that is by definition a selective process where the other options are rejected. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing for sure, but it doesn’t make that good thing bad! Mediocrity, ugliness, laziness and incompetence are real. Because if that when a team produce a really good product it’s always because the the ability of a single leader with a consistent vision to drive the project to completion. It doesn’t matter how much change people like you claim to make in the design industry. In reality, talent is a thing, mediocrity is also a thing. we don’t have to wonder why there are so many designer these days but very little innovations are being made in the industry. It’s now quantity over quality because of well intentioned and pretentious people like you who claim to be smart enough to judge the whole field of design because you are better
I often feel that many designs are purely made to one up other designers. It’s no longer about how asthetically pleasing and appealing to regular humans it is. It’s more like performance art where it’s about showing the world what you can get away with, and to garner praise from others in your profession that have a more abstract look on the objects in question.
Loved this article! keep making more content like this. It has truly helped me feel less alone since I am an architecture student in my second year, most of my classmates and peers tend definitely to become egoistic and narcissistic towards themselves and others around them. It definitely is the hardest part to stay focused in my work and designs when half of the people in my career act like this.