Long Live the (New) Generalist

Designers are generalists. Our greatest strength isn’t our depth on expertise in one area but the ability to cunningly synthesize a panoply of issues from the social to the aesthetic, from the technical to the environmental, and more. Our facility as generalist should make us valuable candidates for cross-disciplinary collaboration in academia, nimble professionals whose work may far extend traditional practice, and public intellectuals who can respect and integrate the diversity of thought attendant to a liberal democracy. We need to value and assert our status as generalists if we expect the outside world to value the products of our labor.