Seems like someone, somewhere, is always having that old (and super annoying) conversation about the meaning of design. I had it again a few nights ago. In this particular conversation, I was arguing that design is simply the process of creating stuff that works. The other person in the conversation was bugged by my insistence on using an industry word—my industry word—to describe the making of the first formalized occurrence of public education system. It ignored other frames of reference, she said. It came from only one point of view, she said. She was right. I kept trying to bring the definition of design out of my industry and into the bigger world. I even offered up other words: creation! making! building! Yay and sound the trumpets!

Problem is, that’s not what design is to most people. To people outside our industry design is not the solution to just about every problem. It’s media specific. It’s web content, strategy, and design. It’s communication strategy and brand design. It’s print and motion pieces.

Now, we’d argue that design is a way of using creativity to achieve a certain kind of meaning. We’d shout that it’s a way of making things that work or a way of making things work better. And I’d argue that we’d be right. But it’s also a way for us creative types to make ourselves and each other feel like we’re doing something big and important in the world. It’s a way for us to scream and whine and scratch our way into the global dialogue. It’s a circle jerk of enormous proportions.

We want so bad to be released from the groups we’ve put ourselves in that we’ve become determined to change the definition of the thing that has defined us for so long. I mean really: if someone’s going to change the definition of design, shouldn’t it be us?

But do you really want to change the definition of what you do? Aren’t you proud of the things you’ve made? The web pieces and the print pieces and the brand strategies and the motion pieces and other stuff? Aren’t you tired of shouting to the world how important your creativity is to it? How about we just continue to make cool stuff that works, or that makes people happy, or that changes someone’s mind? And how about we stop shouting, and let the world describe to itself what it is we do? Sure seems like more fun.