Cerra,
I completely resonate with your description and experience ,and hail you for the course you've taken. How rare...
Fully half of my work is site specific design and fabrication of decorative arts pieces (usable art). I bill myself as an artist and require design input on every project or I don't play. Much of my time is spent educating designers and or house decorators the difference between an artist and a fabricator...It is often frustrating for me to be micro managed by an interior designer,filtering my drawings for the client,deciding what is and what is not correct to even SHOW them...For this reason I make a concerted effort up front to tell whoever brings me on the job that it will be best for everybody if I have direct access to the client. But often (as currently) I will deal with a very wealthy client that REQUIRES me to go through a battery of designers,architects,contractors,and personal assistants. I explain how "inconvenient" this is and inform them that I will be charging them DOUBLE for this extra work (because that's exactly what it is ,extra work)...
www.sfitzgeraldfineart.com

Cerra,

I was pretty surprised there were no responses myself, although we disagree on a few basic premises.

If you are now a member of ASID, then you have learned by now that interior design encompasses a great deal more than just "decorating" a space, painting it, etc. I totally disagree that a background in art or house painting or even building houses hands on will necessarily prepare one to do what a professionally trained interior designer does - but many of those things can certainly be learned by other means than formal training in accredited interior design programs.

Other kinds of training like art, painting, fabrication, and contracting aren't acceptable because they lack the breadth of the training one gets in design school, and people in the trades are often too narrowly focused on their one particular specialty to see the whole big picture that the designer is actually responsible for. The training is just completely different.

But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be allowed to try your hand at interior design anyways - and to let the market decide if you are any good at it or not. I certainly know some *very* fine designers who come from art backgrounds.

The designer is definitely responsible to meet building codes, and this is how it should be - designer as overseer, project manager, coordinator - and of course, setter of the creative direction. There *are* clearly health and safety aspects involved in the job - but as you say, there's also an army of contractors and building inspectors involved in every job where that might possibly be an issue who will make sure that everything is up to code, at least with anything that may affect life safety to any significant degree. There are already redundancies built into the system as it presently exists to protect the consumer; I can't say as I believe we need any more layers that are *required*.

Things go *much* more smoothly if everything is designed properly before anyone tries to build anything, though, and that's where the designer's responsibility definitely comes in - as well as making sure the aethetics and function aren't negatively impacted in any way by the technical requirements of getting the job done. Very often, there are big differences between the aesthetic vision the designer has and what's possible to build (at least within a given budget), and without adequate training and experience, that's when designers really start pissing contractors and everyone else off - as well as costing their clients a whole lot more money because of delays and cost overruns that someone with better training could have easily avoided early on.

I totally agree that there is a whole lot that separates people who are professionally trained in interior design from anyone else - including artists, I'm sorry to say - and I'm all for increasing education and some way for designers to highlight to clients that they have this training and experience that will set them apart from everyone else in the breadth of what they cover - *if* they wish to highlight their credentials in this way.

Where I part company with the "establishment" is that I don't see any need to actually *legislate* this, or to *require* any sort of specific formal training before one can call oneself an interior designer or hang out a shingle.

This is really not brain surgery, and there are many paths to learning the requisite information. A lot of the top designers and architects in the world today had absolutely *no* formal training, but somehow they all learned what they need to know, and we certainly don't hear about their buildings and rooms falling down around their clients' ears. It's a highly technical field, to be sure, but much of what's needed on a day-to-day basis can certainly be learned without a separate degree.

And while we *do* certainly have a definite impact on health and safety in the build environment, there is *no* legal history of anyone having sustained any kind of serious injury as a result of an error on the part of any interior designer.

ASID doesn't tell people this, though - or how mandatory certification/licensing laws have been repeatedly defeated in many states, and even struck down as flat out unconstitutional in at least one. There is absolutely *no* health and safety issue big enough anywhere in the practice of professional interior design as ASID envisions everyone doing it that warrants any kind of governmental intervention into the profession.

When asked to cite examples of how inferior interior design has harmed people, no one was able to come up with a single example - because there *aren't* any.

There has also never been a complaint filed anywhere against an interior designer by a client for health and safety violations that cause them harm before ASID recently went out actively courting people with a survey (whose questions and methodology they refuse to disclose or even discuss) to gain support for their position.

That's right - the whole foundation for the push for mandatory legislation doesn't even exist. But that's certainly not what ASID and IIDA will tell you.

For those who *want* some formal acknowledgement of having survived design school and working for slave wages for someone else, and credentials to show this, that should certainly be available, but it most assuredly should *not* be mandatory. Aside from all of the people who would be put out of business overnight with any sort of mandatory legislation of this profession, we also just plain don't need more governmental controls on our lives, or the attendant increased costs adding to our tax burdens.

As to what consumers have access to, you are right that they have access to more than ever before, and yes, the average person may only want a little guidance or confirmation that they're on the right track. The most discriminating tastes will never be satisfied by anything that consumers do have access to in this day and age, though, and to coordinate the thousands of details involved in producing a distinctive, high end interior (or a code-compliant commercial one) still requires a skilled interior designer who has vast resources consumers know nothing about. Even if the consumer had access to these resources, most would be completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of knowledge, detail, and work involved in producing even a single piece, particularly if they had to deal with all of that for every single thing they were to put in their homes.

And as to whether designers pick up a hammer and nails or not, interior design is not construction, nor is construction interior design. I think it *helps* to know from first hand experience what will stand up and what won't, but it's really not essential at all if you've got the right tradespeople working on the job. I know what's inside a wall without ever having framed one myself, and that helps me make more informed design decisions. It does require knowing what can be done and what can't, but that's learnable without ever picking up a hammer.

What I find really annoying is "designers" who have no formal training, no on-the-job training with someone who does know the job, *and* who insist that they know it all and refuse to accept the input of the skilled tradespeople and craftsmen they bring in on their jobs, often demanding things that are physically impossible. (The last absurdity I heard about was someone who insisted on purchasing an 8' long hide for a sofa, because she didn't want any seams in the leather <@@> - I kid you not - and getting angry when the showroom rep told her such a thing is impossible).

There is absolutely no way that any of us can know everything about every trade, and getting a job done right requires a team effort. A big part of my job is to make sure I bring highly skilled contractors and fabricators onto the team, and to set the overall direction - and then to lead that team in a collaborative effort to reach an end result that meets my overall vision and employs the best of their skills to achieve it.

Primadonna, dictatorial designers obviously still exist - and more power to them if they can still find quality tradespeople willing to work with them. They give the rest of us a bad name, to be sure, which can be a real PITA when you come across a client who has dealt with them, or a contractor who has gotten turned off to designers because this is all they've ever encountered - but hey, stupidity and boorishness aren't illegal and shouldn't be made so, even despite this. Basic market forces will weed out the ones who really don't have a clue what they're doing.