My uncle is a quiet man. He smokes a pipe with a wry smile. Like he knows something you don’t. For years he restored traction engines; huge, victorian, steam-driven machines. He did it for the love of it. I have wondered if he did to escape. Like a lot of men that age, he spent a lot of time in his shed on his own, surrounded by the smell of oil, grease and pipe tobacco. A dusty pile of tabloid newspapers in the corner. Slowly whittling away on a small piece of metal, making some grommet or flange or something.

Sounds romantic doesn’t it?

Now, how many times have you heard web designers and developers talk this way about their work? For me, it’s been increasingly. And personally I find it concerning. For starters, it’s a designer-centric way of working. It’s a selfish exploit to pour love into your work. If you’re working commercially, who pays for that time? You? Well, that’s bad. The client? Well, that’s ok if they see the value. But many don’t.

Giving your work love is not just about giving it time. But, time can often be better spent than whittling away on some nubbin’ or grommet just because you think that’s where you can give the work your love. Your craft.

Over the past few years, I’ve spent more time on projects not whittling. Whittling happens in the very latter stages of work and I really don’t find myself in that place very often. Mostly that’s because the clients I work for have a myriad of big, sticky problems that need working out before you start ‘crafting a user interface’, whatever that means. I’m more often than not in a place where my own job, as a designer, is to not make something I love. But to make something appropriate. Something that does the job well. Something that responds to a hypothesis and serves a need. Not necessarily something loved and beautiful. And that’s ok.

Craft is an emotional word not appropriate to describe the job of designing. It’s too self-centred. Too mired in arts and crafts and puts a difficult-to-measure parameter into the minds of clients.

‘I want a beautifully crafted interface from a passionate designer’

Translates to:

‘I want a self-centred designer to spend way too long on the shiny than actually solving the problem or having the difficult discussions’.

If my uncle was restoring traction engines for a living, he would’ve been out of business. Craft is love. And love takes time. And time is scarce and probably best spent elsewhere.