http://www.idpcinfo.org/THREE_E_s.pdf

I don’t get the point of this tirade. The desire to increase one’s stature and status within an ever increasingly complex society is simply natural. We do this by organizing, sharing and increasing our body of knowledge, instilling ethical practices and providing a unique benefit to society.  To impugn this natural proclivity for self and societal betterment is evidently far easier than actually participating in the process, working to improve it, or creating a better one.  Collateral disaffection of those whose career is literally changing and evolving beneath them is also part of the process. This disaffection becomes exacerbated when the professional society chooses to pursue governmental regulation to establish a higher level of professional status. We unfortunately opened up that can of worms far too early in the development of our professional society. What is important to remember is that the education/experience/examination paradigm and the use of the government to validate that paradigm are two different issues. Do not let the IDPC or any of the disaffected and disenfranchised confuse you. 

Despite the IDPC’s conjecture, rhetoric, opinion, and misinformation claiming otherwise, the CIDA education and NCIDQ experience/examination model is the best path and most logical choice for those of us who wish to practice interior design at the highest level. Is it perfect?- NO! Can it be improved? Hell yes!  But to claim that natural talent and a flair for color are all the credentials one needs to attain professional status and occupational license to design physiologically and psychologically supportive interior environments that enhance quality of life is simply delusional.

While life would be so much simpler if we could just be amused by the IDPC’s vitriol, the painful fact of the matter is that they are the public relations face for a well funded, strategically savvy and effective campaign whose single goal is to de-professionalize the profession of interior design. To deny that they influence the direction of our supposedly collective effort to advance the status of the profession is foolish at best and professional suicide at worst.

Unfortunately the effort to raise the standards of the profession of Interior Design by using the government to sort out the qualified from the not has created a monster backlash (not merely the cult of angry decorators) that our conflicted professional domain is ill prepared to deal with. Oh sure the IDPC seems to be a relatively low level threat and it is easy, for those of us who care about such things, to look at them as a one hornet nest. But the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of high level, well funded legal machinations aimed at combating and defeating our sole effort to advance the societal status of the profession.   It’s almost as if the IDPC is puking straw man arguments to distract, those of us who care about such things, from focusing on the real issues such as conflicts of interest with the AIA and the NKBA. But lo they are not that savvy.

It’s just that we are weak and we are easy pickin’s for what has evolved into an over- zealous quasi-libertarian witch hunt in which the angry decorators, misinformed kitchen and bath designers and turf conscious architects will not be satisfied until they completely neuter our  profession.  

I hope our lawyers can beat up their lawyers.