<story><title>A Call to All UI Designers: Do Not Play Skype’s Game</title><url>http://kaishinlab.com/no-to-skype-competition/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>larrik</author><text>Am I the only one who thinks there&apos;s way too much similarity between the the RIAA&apos;s &quot;Save the artists&quot; screeching, and the &quot;design industry&apos;s&quot; &quot;Save the artists&quot; screeching?&lt;p&gt;Your existing business model is disappearing, and your cartel isn&apos;t going to stop it. Sucks for you.&lt;p&gt;(BTW, my wife is a graphic designer, so make of that what you will)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>webwright</author><text>&quot;Your existing business model is disappearing&quot;.&lt;p&gt;No, it&apos;s not.  It&apos;s changing-- just like programming.&lt;p&gt;Non-consultative design is eminently outsource-able.  Many many businesses can thrive with a &quot;good enough&quot; logo or site theme from 99Designs or PageForest...  Just like most businesses can thrive with Drupal or WordPress for most of their needs (supported by a $15/hr offshore developer) instead of hiring a programmer.&lt;p&gt;If you&apos;re a designer or a developer, your best protection is being good at solving Hard Problems(tm) that are Core to the Business.&lt;p&gt;A Bed and Breakfast will never hire an expensive resource for their logo or contact form.  But they WILL buy nice mattresses and sheets.&lt;p&gt;A startup will go to great lengths to buy a crappy used desk on Craigslist for pennies, but will generally NOT skimp on developers or product design if they can help it.&lt;p&gt;The days of getting paid $95/hr for making something pretty or simple form/database work are coming to an end.  But the opportunity for designer/developers who can demonstrably help sales/revenue are EXPLODING.</text></comment>
<story><title>A Call to All UI Designers: Do Not Play Skype’s Game</title><url>http://kaishinlab.com/no-to-skype-competition/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>larrik</author><text>Am I the only one who thinks there&apos;s way too much similarity between the the RIAA&apos;s &quot;Save the artists&quot; screeching, and the &quot;design industry&apos;s&quot; &quot;Save the artists&quot; screeching?&lt;p&gt;Your existing business model is disappearing, and your cartel isn&apos;t going to stop it. Sucks for you.&lt;p&gt;(BTW, my wife is a graphic designer, so make of that what you will)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>roc</author><text>Hopefully.  Because at any level of abstraction below &apos;high orbit&apos;, the comparison completely fails.&lt;p&gt;The most important and glaring difference that your abstraction completely ignores, is that the RIAA&apos;s audience is governments and their goal is to see laws enacted that will have wide ranging impact on music and computing.&lt;p&gt;Designers&apos; audience is would-be customers and other designers.  Their goal is educating customers on the difference between a $100 logo and an identity package that costs orders of magnitude more, and educating other designers on the impact of trying to compete with the $100 logo on price.&lt;p&gt;Designers have no cartel.  They have no legal/lobbying arm.  They&apos;ve never controlled distribution or access.  They&apos;ve never been multiply convicted of illegal vertical integration and horizontal collusion.  They aren&apos;t trying to see your rights legislated away to protect the comfortable industry monopoly they have never had.</text></comment>