Bylines in Design

My wife is a reporter. In her world, you do the work, you put your name on it. In the design world, you do your work, someone else puts their company name on it. Perhaps one reason we don’t get as much respect as we deserve is that we’re for the most part anonymous.

Unless you look at Comm Arts Interactive or something similar, you often have no idea who designed a particular site, application, or device. It would be nice if we could start including as part of our contracts, that someplace visible, either in documentation or under About This Site or About X Application, it says simply Designer: Your Name.

In this simple way, those of us who aren’t Phillipe Stark or Michael Graves would get what we all want: a little respect. And maybe more money too.