Hmm, I totally see & sympathise with feeling this about a lot of graphic design/ers (having dropped out of viscom partially bc of it) but honestly, all fields have douches &genuinely smart & engaged people. Doubt comp sci is any exception …Like some of the most interesting, engaging people I’ve met have been designers..typefaces -like anything else - can be interesting … Interesting histories etc… It’s just that most discussion about them is a trend based, elitist, petty geekery
it’s totally true! & I know a lot of great designers, obviously. and a hellllllll of a lot of shitty computer science people, and I think good design is wonderful — in theory I’m really into the way design as a field seeks to advance beauty/meaning and utility in unison rather than seeing them as trade-offs. I get frustrated partly because it could be amazing, there’s so many missed opportunities. I obviously have a lot of strong opinions about design, I care about it quite a bit. but mostly it’s just the particular design *way* of being douchey that pushes my buttons, you know? I think it’s because being a designer is an indie progressive thing, and that’s kind of my social set. (I have a similar reaction towards social theory bros and lit majors, and I am super into both those fields.) I feel like the people I know often aren’t willing to see or acknowledge the ways Design as an institution is ugly and foolish. but it’s fair to say that if I hung out with more science fiction nerds I would probably be feeling more sorry for the poor designers who had to put up with the comp sci kids, with all their arcane and elitist unconcern for user-friendliness.
