At the end of Disney’s “Ratatouille”, Anton Ego, the former villain-food-critic-turned-good, dropped one of the most profound string of words that could possibly come from a cartoon character. These words have always stuck with me as an aspiring designer. He says,

In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for [the] famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize, only now do truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere

For years we have seen one of the biggest controversies in the modern design industry, the saying, “everyone’s a designer”, has both inspired many and invalidated the identity of equal amounts. It’s astounding that a four-word sentence can make a whole community divide.

Designers, by nature, eat, sleep, breathe, and live design. It’s part of our identity. I vividly remember sitting on the floor of my dad’s home office as he worked in product design. He would talk through his design challenges and sprints with me even though I wasn’t sure what most of it meant. This evolved into working through personal problems throughout my life with design thinking tools, theories, and concepts. I developed this passion for design and UX. I found my values as an artist through these experiences. I am a daughter, sister, student, friend, and designer. And my story is not unlike the story of other artists in the craft.

We simply cannot deny that it is human behavior to create. Intentional or not, every single person who has ever walked the earth has created something, has designed something, has been involved in a design process. The last thing I would want to do is invalidate such a beautiful point of the human experience. Michael Gungor, an American singer, songwriter, author, producer, and podcast host, sums it up perfectly by saying,

“We are all creators. Whether or not we create is not up to us. We are human, and creating is what we do. Every interaction, movement, and decision is creativity at work. We are all artists. We all order creation around us into the world that we want to make.”

We’ve seen artists gatekeeping, excluding, and making art and design an elitist culture for centuries. The Academy of Art days of the Renaissance was infamous for rejecting artists left and right. Women, alternative artists, people of color, or people of low economic status were all rejected from creation and professionalism just for being who they are. Inclusivity and embracing ambiguity has been more acceptable in art culture throughout generations, but this has brought problems all on its own.

Now, as a writer, this is where I am absolutely at a crossroads. On one hand, I want to defend my identity and the work I’m doing to get an education and earn the title of a designer. I don’t want to invalidate my own personal experiences. On the other hand, my biggest values as an aspiring UX Designer are collaboration, empathy, and innovative solutions. I don’t want to invalidate the experiences of others and the human behavior of the design. I simply cannot go against what I believe in for an easy, wrapped-up-in-a-bow solution to this controversy. I cannot be hypocritical in my writing, and simply I’m just not qualified to make the rules of who’s a designer and who isn’t. This being said, I hope to add value to the argument with my perspective as a member of a new generation of designers.

There is extreme value in professionalism. Of course, as people there are individual talents and hobbies of each, which are completely valuable. That being said, high-level training allows for an individual to not only develop those skills, but also allows them to know the rules of productive solutions better than most, and differentiate the good solutions from the bad, therefore cutting the time it takes to solve problems in half. There are also crucial soft-skills that come with specialization. Being able to work on a team, empathize with a client or user, and present solutions to high executives in a way that makes sense to them are all important skills that come with being a professional designer today.

Let’s take a look at another movie reference. Any of the Oceans movies, the ones full of high-risk heists and cons, a group of skilled artists achieving a goal. We watch those movies and we see a diverse team of people, each with a different skill set. You have your car guy, a casino expert, some kind of tech-genius, and the mastermind and ringleader of it all, Danny Ocean himself. These teams of people have so many different specializations, and that’s what makes them so successful in their goals. Now. Take this principle into the design community.

We know that design is an umbrella term that encompasses many skills and abilities. Some companies think that hiring one or two UX designers will solve all their interface problems. In reality, all professional designers have their specialties. Whether it is graphic design, the design thinking process, front-end development, marketing design, product creation, prototyping, or the psychology side of things, there are simply too many labels and positions in the design community for one person to possess all of them. These companies are looking for a unicorn that not only will be difficult to find but difficult to afford as well. This is where looking for professional, experienced designers with different areas of expertise is crucial to a company’s success, because different high-skilled specializations create a diverse team with high productivity.

Gatekeeping is a newer term that describes a group of people having access to a certain community, activity, or culture. As a design community, we are losing possible solutions and creations by saying that our community is for the select few. It’s also contributing to the increase in cases of Imposter Syndrome that is ever more common in the industry. While there is a definite time and place for defending the design identity, when done wrong it can do much more harm than good.

To conclude; can good design come from anywhere? Absolutely. Should we as designers be open to good ideas coming from executives, developers, and users? 100%. But, is everyone a designer by trade? No. Professional training and expertise as a designer is an identity. A designer has specializations that take years of experience and education to develop. A designer knows how to refine their creative process to produce solutions and creations in the right amount of time. A designer’s job is just as rejecting bad solutions as it is coming up with good solutions. The designer isn’t the gatekeeper to good design, but rather the defender against the bad.

“Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.” — Anton Ego

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article published on our platform. This story contributed to Bay Area Black Designers: a professional development community for Black people who are digital designers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area. By joining together in community, members share inspiration, connection, peer mentorship, professional development, resources, feedback, support, and resilience. Silence against systemic racism is not an option. Build the design community you believe in.