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Comment by Atheros | Hacker News Reader

This is why graphic designers should be kept as far away from projects that create things that must be used by other people and not just admired for their beauty. The current subway map is a good map because it was basically designed by sociologists. Sociologists should be doing much more designing than what we ask of them today. This is one of the reasons the current map shows some but not all curves along a train line- the sociologists figured out that if a curve can be felt onboard a train then it is best to try to reflect the curve on the map. To not do so makes people feel uneasy. If I need beautiful or creative content for my art gallery, graphic designers are invited. If I need to create something useful then they are not.

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A good graphic designer will work with people like sociologists, psychologists, etc to convey the information in the most effective way based on some set of requirements. If a graphic designer does not approach their work in this way then they aren't really doing anything.

"If I need beautiful or creative content for my art gallery, graphic designers are invited."

No, you don't - you'd need artists, not designers.

Learning to identify and distinguish between the two will allow you to avoid the wrong (but common) generalization you just wrote.

> This is why graphic designers should be kept as far away from projects that create things that must be used by other people and not just admired for their beauty.

> If I need beautiful or creative content for my art gallery, graphic designers are invited.

You're confusing design with art or decoration.

It doesn't make sense, at all, to say that designers should be kept away if you don't even have a correct working definition of design. I'd suggest you do a little bit of research before establishing such a position. You wouldn't dismiss, e.g., an economical model without at least some knowledge about it, right?

Many designers confuse design with art and decoration.

Yeah, the same way many "software developers" confuse software development with mashing up copy & pasted code without a clear picture of how it works. I'd argue that those aren't software developers, just like the designers" you refer to aren't designers.

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