Ume University

Booster Course in English

Lenita Kri, Nicola Zocche, Christiane Engman
September 2, y

Professional X Self-taught
designers
Argumentative Essay

Imagine that you are accepted in this university you were looking
forward to study Civil Engineering. Years later, after hard studying for so
long, there comes the time that you start working in constructions, with
other professionals and construction workers. These construction workers,
who most likely already know how to raise a house and do some lowcomplexity engineering works, start to offer their services as being
substitutes for civil engineers in some cases, and their services' price is
usually much cheaper than the price you pay while hiring a professional
something from 60% to 95%. That is what is happening to the design
market in many countries of the world. People in design schools are losing
space to self-taught designers who claim to have enough experience to
handle medium and big-sized projects.
The fact is that these self-taught designers may know how to deal
with clients or how to execute a project, but they are known to usually
lack basic knowledge taught in design schools that is indispensable for
every professional, such as design history & fundamentals, presentation
skills and how to manage workflow. Indeed, this point has been bringing a
lot to discuss since it is known that it is from these people that many
dubious quality jobs come from. Jokes has been made about it and
although it can be a funny subject to some, it is in fact something serious
to worry about, since there is no development in good practices if there is
a considerable amount of poor-quality outcoming work. There is no
ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY

EDUARDO PEREIRA

acknowledgment of the job, therefore people would not recognise

designers as true professionals who have studied a lot and have a solid
working process but workers who charge much than the work is worth.
Moreover, it creates a loop of increasing mistaken demands. Of
course self-taught designers with some expertise can fulfil some incoming
requirements in the market, low complexity jobs such as a logo for a tiny
young traditional company, print media for a small event or a lean
institutional website. These can surely be made by a doer, since in most of
the cases, the client has not much money and maybe not a great strategic
plan for the business. The problem is when a big client makes the wrong
choice and hire someone like this instead of a professional designer, who
thinks in the institutions business plan and thinks about a long-term
result for his clients. Then it creates a culture that can hardly be broken, a
culture of paying cheap for the wrong job.
For this reason, even though it may be difficult for professional
designers to admit that this world needs self-taught designers to supply
demands that arent meant to be theirs, it is a truth that cannot be
hidden. In fact, learning by yourself and by practice, supplying the
markets needs, can develop a high level of knowledge about consumers
and a strong know-how, but it is not the way it works. If this man can
spend his time working hard on a solution for a low-complexity project but
has not enough patience or will to try to understand the meanings behind
his work, he will never advance to another level, and then he will be doing
the same thing for years and years until the moment he realises he has
been doing it the wrong way by instinct but not by head.
Finally, there is still time to fix the situation. Professional and selftaught designers can work in peace, without having to fight against each
other, but for that, there must be at least two things: good sense, to
understand the needs of the clients and if the complexity of the project
suits the designers category, and peace, so there can be a cooperative
network where there is dialog and a strong development of the working
class.

ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY

EDUARDO PEREIRA