This weekend, over Easter dinner, one of our family friends asked me how business was and, through the process of telling her about a project we just finished, she discovered what it is we really do for our clients.

Sufficed to say, it's a lot more than make graphics. She was genuinely surprised to hear that we had, for this project, designed a website, helped the business owner define their vision of their company, helped define businesses processes, and specified and implemented a system to manage the business through the website.

The conversation went a little like this:

"So, you're like a consultant," she said.

"No. I hate consultants," I replied. I've worked with a few that I've liked, but by and large, my experience with consultants has been that they're incapable of doing anything, and many times they simply apply the same solution over and over again, regardless of how poorly it fits their clients.

"Yeah, but you didn't just design graphics, you provided solutions to a bunch of business issues."

"I hate the word solutions too." I said. Odd that I loathe the word solutions so much, when I do claim that design is a problem solving profession, but, I do. It's a word that has been abused by the people who market things that are hard to explain to the point where it has no meaning. It also implies that the problem is already defined. After all, you can't solve a problem that you can't define. Many times, when we start working with a client, the problem is not defined, or it is ill-defined.

"Well, I don't know what to call it then."

And therein lies the problem with the design industry. In today's marketplace, graphic designers do a lot more than design graphics. Good ones do anyway. We design systems. We decide how things will work, in addition to how it looks...because these things are inextricably linked. That makes it hard to explain what we do, and it makes it hard to set client expectations.

I've said in the past that the term Graphics Designer is inaccurate when describing most good designers. Graphics Designers design graphics. Graphic Designers solve problems graphically...or, visually. It's a slight but important distinction.

So, what is a graphic designer? We are professional problem solvers. We tend to think in visual terms, of user experience, and how things should be or could be. We care a lot less about what is easy than we care about what is good. We're not out to make an easy dollar. We're out to make your project, your brand, your business, the world, a little better. We're professional collaborators, and if we're any good, we're going to push you to make things better than you thought it could be.