Because in a world where everyone’s a designer, designing isn’t enough anymore. Clients want to know what’s behind their projects and the people that do them.

Some say technology is making our world smaller but it’s really just making it more anonymous.

There are professionals from every field available online. You can order groceries, do your banking and hire a lawyer whose face you’ll never see, all from the comfort of your keyboard. Whatever you’re looking for is available in legions.

So the question is no longer whether or not you can find someone to do the work. You can.

The question is: who’s going to do it? It’s about you and me and our personal branding. It’s about the people behind the scenes, what they do and how they arrive at their magic.

It’s about the quality you’ll present to this growing world of quantity.

In all the speed of our modern world we’re all still seekers after beauty. We can get the news anywhere, but where do we find the poetry? For me the poetry is in the process and in the end result. You’ve got to take a ride and make the ride enjoyable for those around you. You’ve got to be responsible about where you’re going and how you get there.

This manifesto is about us, what we do and how we arrive.

Why do we design?

We design because we love it.

We design because design is beautiful.

We design because making something look better earns us the right to complain about things we don’t like. And then change them.

We design because this is our world and if we don’t like it we’ve nobody to blame but ourselves.

Apple computers are gorgeous; that’s half the story. They also work phenomenally well, which is the other half. But were they boxed in matte black sheet metal they’d lose appeal. You could say beauty is not tangible, but anyone who’s opened the box of a new shiny gadget and felt that rush knows the truth.

Design is tangible; beauty is tangible. You can’t cut either of them with a knife but that’s a physicist’s definition of tangible and we’re not interested in that here. The truth is, we all know, deep down where the real things reside, there’s another universe of tangible and it sits right there in your chest.

It’s the place where Christmas as a child lives and where it hurts when you lose someone. There’s more reality there than in any block of concrete.

That’s why we design: because it matters.

How do we design?

Very carefully. That’s the truth disguised as a flippant answer.

It’s the truth because good design is functional, and without the end goal and end user in mind, there can be no true function and hence no design.

We design when we know where we’re going, and no sooner. There is beauty in functionality, in purpose.

You know the feeling you get when you flip on the light switch and nothing happens? That’s bad design. Bad design is improper function and something not working like we suppose it should.

Is a website any different? Should there be ten images when one will do? Should the navigation require the wits of a neurologist to figure out? Should every last pixel be packed with eye candy?

One glance around the ‘net will show you that not everyone in our field agrees, but there’s one sure thing we’ve come to know over the years:

When there are millions of websites, ebooks and products available at the flick of a “dot com,” quality is of utmost importance.

The web is about content. Anyone who comes to your site is looking for something. Our purpose as designers is to deliver this something, make it live, make it breathe and present it as it should be presented.

Or at the very least just make sure people can find it, for God’s sake.

Design is the route the crow flies from dry utility to brilliant interesting function.

If it doesn’t work, it isn’t designed well. And if it does work but people don’t want to use it…it still isn’t designed well.

Good design works and people want their hands all over it.

I run a design business for money, but that’s a different thing. The money has always come as an incidental, as an effect and not the cause. I design and often people want to give me money for it. That’s a healthy relationship and a good way to stay alive.

But I design because I love it. I design because when I don’t, odd things happen inside me and the world takes on a certain pallor.

I’m a designer because when I walk around in the city I can’t keep my eyes off storefront signs, sandwich boards, even newspapers in their stands. Everywhere I look is typography for me to study and I often wonder if I’d have made the same choices.

I’m a designer because I see bumper stickers with type so small it can’t be read unless you physically run into the other vehicle. I wonder about the thought process behind that choice and why the designer didn’t care more for his audience.

When I go to the movies, I often pay more attention to the opening credits than the rest of the movie because they’re fountains of inspiration to me. Pacing, typography, layering, composition, mood and how music and images go together…every movie is a semester of schooling for me.

While I hate watching the news on TV I love watching their opening sequences for the same reason. A lot of info has to go into very tight time and space constraints. They’ve got pictures of news anchors, the station logo, stock quotes superimposed over the Loch Ness monster, pictures of Seattle and random shiny bits in motion all over the place and somehow it works. It’s fascinating and I can’t tear my eyes from it. That’s another semester.

Then there’s the internet. I started designing websites because I wasn’t happy with what I saw. Many people were trying to make their businesses thrive on the internet, and I knew they were failing just by looking at their sites. Would you give your money to someone who actually thinks green with pink polka dots is a pleasing color scheme? Or that a flashing star background behind a horse running through a meadow somehow makes sense? Sites like these always left me with a haunting residue. Like what happens when you eat asparagus.

Then there are the great sites. The one-in-a-million site that has 96 awards listed in the footer, and which is so good I feel a pang of jealousy. I see those and wonder why I’m a designer at all, or if I’m even capable of such magic. Those are the times when I spend 48 straight hours reading books on design and doing tutorials, just to keep up with the talent around me if I’m to stand any chance at all.

I’m a designer because I’m probably not slick enough to be a politician, but I’m unwilling to let things slide as I see them. Design is how an artist changes the world, even if it’s just a page at a time.

That’s what it means to me to be a designer. You look around and you wonder.