(No) Country for Old Men
Thought about design and development in Italy
Oh so you are a designer, you must love drawing!
This is exactly what every italian dude/dudette reply when you tell them about your fabulous job. Don’t get me wrong, I love Italy, is the place where I was born, is the place that gave me an education, culture, good food and maybe too many summer loves. But there’s one thing I can’t really accept: The misconception about design.
It’s sad to say, but in Italy the idea of design it’s mostly related to forniture or advertising, so when you don’t fit in one of these cases people get pretty confused. Especially when you use black magic names like UI/UX designer, UI engineer, Visual designer, Interaction designer and so goes on.
My personal story is pretty complicated, I have been in love with graphic design since I was 10 years old, and since then I always have “designed” something. I have started making signatures for forums when they were very popular, then I created custom UI and skin for my favourite videogames, starting with something more professional being a freelancer web designer back in 2008. This also the year when my life completely changed. This was the year I got to University.
Now, even if loved being a designer, choose a degree in Design is not an easy choice in Italy, especially for the reason I mentioned above ( of course if you want became a product designer or working in advertasing I have no prob with that and you will not have too).
But in my field, something more related to experience design I had no possibility back in time to get a job in Italy, simple beacuse we dont “own” that culture in design. So since I was good in math and all the logic stuff, I choosen to attend an Engineer school. And I graduated also. But in all the years of school I never abandoned my passion, hoping that one day I would go back to my first love. I read books, tutorials, I attended conferences, I met exeptional people. I tried to “feed” me as much design possible, since I was starving in my engineering class.
Thinking about it now is the best choice I ever made. In those years I really learn what means being a designer, designer are architects no simple laborers, designer are engineers not simple workers.
We are the engineers of the emotions.
We are thinkers.
Those are the definitions I would love Italian people would get. There is a branch of designers who work for make people not only use their product, but love them. Who shape a product from start to end, not sleeping at night think the best possible solutions just to give to people the best experience possible.
So if you are italian and are reading this article I advice you to contact me and maybe we can create a community to educate Italians people about the “other side” of design. If you are not, next time you are hiring someone and an Italian will apply for your job, please give him/her some credit, cause there is an high possibility that that person have fought against his country, his culture, maybe his own family just to pursuit his dream.
As always, thank you for reading.
