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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

> I'm not the world's best designer by any means, nor am I "classically trained" in design as they say, but I like my results

Don't we all. There should be a rule that says "any non-designer can draw something that he himself can't improve upon".

I'm certainly not arguing in favor of hiring for the sake of hiring, and freelance-everything is how I see the future.

But saying anyone can do anything if they just think about it hard enough is a bit of a stretch. "Jack of all trades, master of none" is real. An actual designer will save you lots of time.

Additionally, there is value in dialogue; having someone to talk to about specific problems helps immensely. And who's going to take time to talk with you about minute details of your product if they're not somehow compensated for it?

(Service idea: a Q/A site where people could ask questions about their products as they're building them. Does this exist already? Some subreddit maybe?)

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Programming, drawing, they're all just tools of the trade. It's like a hammer in the hand of a sculptor. Depending on talent and time (not either alone) you might get different results coming out.

People like to think in absolutes. You're either a designer, or you're engineer. You're either a scientist, or you're a philosopher. This attitude is not only wrong, but also completely contrary to what our "hero's" have taught us.

I myself went to art school when I was a kid, I didn't even realize until I thought about it a while back. Does that make me a designer? Not really. Could I pick it up if I put enough effort and time into it? Almost certainly, but will I?

The other thing is environment. The creativity part comes from the environment you're in. Good scientists have scientists around them that help them brainstorm even without brainstorming(not in the business sense of hey let's sit down and brainstorm, and more in the sense of discussing random thoughts at lunch or w/e). It's no different from Github, dribbble, conferences or a lot of other things that can be considered "environment". Part of why people want to work at google is because of the environment.

I attached a blog post of a pretty good designer that made the transition from being an engineer. [1]

[1] http://somerandomdude.com/2012/01/10/transition-from-develop...

Totally agree with most of what you are saying, except that there are trades; you can certainly be an engineer and a designer at the same time if you have given each occupation enough work and attention; but mastering anything takes time and just because you got yourself a chisel doesn't make you Phidias.

(Case in point: the new Yahoo! logo, that was drawn according to the principle that if you can start Illustrator, you're Jony Ive http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/60336044815/geeking-out-o...)

> An actual designer will save you lots of time.

I think he covers this when he states immediately after your quote, "I bring in the big guns when needed as freelancers". He just advocates employing a designer for specific tasks that he can't do himself.

>(Service idea: a Q/A site where people could ask questions about their products as they're building them. Does this exist already? Some subreddit maybe?)

nreduce when it existed did this. I think there have been similar attempts by others since then.

While I got some value from that myself on one of my projects, I ended up getting more help via feedback from users. (Some had day jobs as programmers, which eased communication a lot.)

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