Tuesday, April 12, 2011

LICENSING FOR INTERIORS DESIGNERS? THIS IS NO LIFE OR DEATH MATTER

This is my reply to an article in the St. Pete Times a few weeks ago where designers were addressing lawmakers pleading with them to keep this silly practice in place .......one was even quoted as saying that poor choices could be bad for your health!  Here is my reply to the article's author .....thought it was worth a post. 


"I have been a praciticing professional interior designer since graduating from design school in 1975. I also write about design and can be found in a google search where articles appear that I have written.  Interior Design is my second degree, I am a graduate of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill with a Bachelor's degree in Art History.  In all the years of my profession I have never known anyone to be harmed by the selection of home furnishings, either psychologically or otherwise.  It has baffled me from the beginning of my career the steps that are often taken to protect one's business skills or the lack of them.  No one is going to die from an orange sofa - or a purple one for that matter.  Design is meant to bring comfort and a pleasing aesthetic to our surroundings and the talent and expertise that is applied cannot be regulated or brought to bear by a liscense.  The service that a competent interior designer or decorator for that matter, whether it be for residential or commercial use, is based on talent and knowledge of one's field, one's sources and one's resources.  Just as every profession requires knowledge of product and its appropriate use, so does the profession of professional design.  Some of the best designers I have ever known are those with no formal training at all ........just as Irving Berlin knew and created his music "by ear," so often do we.  To subscribe to the fear of competition by requesting a regulation of a field that is above all else subjective by taste and function, is to deny the width and breadth of our individual talents and the experience we gain by our on the job training.  Passing a test, paying for a license and maintaining a "badge" of some sort, does not equal talent or expertise.  If the public falls for that, or if the public fails to be a participant in their own personal needs, then no liscense or the lack of it can save them from the misery that they unwittingly ask for by getting not only what they don't want, don't need and most of all is not appropriate for their own personal needs. 
Judy Bistany
Interior Design

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