Bear with me; I’m going to head back to theatre-nerd reference land for a minute. I mentioned a few times that I was just in Gypsy, a show about a young girl who is pushed into burlesque and stripping by her overzealous, fame-seeking mother. There’s an exchange in the show between one of the strippers at the theater and the daughter in which the daughter explains that she “can’t be a stripper because she has no talent.” To which the stripper responds, “to be a stripper all you need to have is no talent.”
To be a designer all you need to have is no talent. Stop and think about that for a second. How many terrible designers do you know? People that have no artistic skill whatsoever but still manage to extract the dollars from desperate clients who don’t know that there’s a better act just down the street.
Near the end of the show, the daughter has accepted stripping and become quite famous for it. She makes a statement during her act about being an “ecdysiast”, or one who sheds its skin, and exclaiming that “at these prices, I’m not a stripper; I’m an ecdysiast!”
With that in mind, there are plenty of truly talented designers out there, and as is often the case, they have higher rates. But at the same time, you’ll find designers charging like they’re ecdysiasts when they’re not, and vice versa. Such is life on the internerd: anybody can claim to be anything.
Dino said:
I find it worse when people represent that they have a skill set, and then do not. I cant change my oil, but I would not take your money and then give some of it to someone else to do the work.
That is just crap.
You should not sell what you cannot do.
16:18 on 11 Mar 2008
matches said:
That’s certainly frustrating to deal with in any situation, but when it comes to design it’s so easy for those without the skills to fake it, at least until it’s too late for the client to back out.
16:27 on 11 Mar 2008