Design: the "connective tissue"
It was in the mid-eighties when I discovered that the activity I now call "design" had a name, and that you could do it for a living. Despite having spent almost 30 years involved in it one way or another, to this day I freeze for a moment when someone asks me "What do you do?" Either this means I spent a long (long) time doing something I don't understand (and considering I made a decent living at it that would be remarkable in itself), or I don't trust in my ability to convey the nature of it in a few words. Instead I try to find an easier, faster, more acceptable way to handle the question and move on with the rest of our lives, secretly resenting the fact that I failed, once again. The problem is that "Design" is a term open to a variety of interpretations, and everybody expects it to get more specific, or else they'll attach to it whatever preconceived notion they have about it. "I'm a designer" means virtually nothing...