INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS: everyone thinks they're a designer, nobody thinks they're an engineer

This asymmetry reveals everything wrong with how we position our work. Someone has an opinion about aesthetics and suddenly they're giving you feedback on form language. But that

same person would never walk into a mechanical engineering review and suggest gear ratios because they watched a YouTube video about transmissions.

Engineering sold itself as specialized knowledge with consequences. Bad engineering means recalls and liability. We sold design as taste and subjective preference. So everyone feels qualified to have an opinion because everyone has taste.

AI is accelerating this. Tools that generate renderings make people think rendering is the work. But rendering is documentation, not thinking. The actual design happens when you're deciding parting lines that balance cost against visual cleanliness. When you're specifying texture that guides hand placement without instruction. When you're choosing proportions that telegraph durability before someone reads a spec.

If you're not thinking about design in these terms yet, with this nuance and complexity, find a mentor before you become part of the problem. This craft has depth that takes years to develop.

The cost of pretending otherwise isn't hurt feelings. It's worse products, undermined expertise, and a profession that gets treated like decoration instead of engineering's equal. If you wouldn't let someone spec your tolerances because they have opinions about circles, don't let them spec your design decisions because they have opinions about blue.

Design with intention → https://craftedby.agency/