Kudos to John Czarnecki, editor of Contract Magazine, for coming out in a public forum to counter anti-interior design regulation rhetoric.  It’s about time our professional trade journals step up to the profession’s plate to take a swat at these misinformed and confounding missives.

http://www.contractdesign.com/contract/design/The-Need-for-a-Respo-11669.shtml

For the most part Mr. Czarnecki got  a base hit….we have a runner on base…Wooo Hoooo!  Okay enough with the sport metaphor.

PROFESSIONALINTERIORDESIGNER can only dream of the influence Mr. Czarnecki wields.  WELCOME TO THE FRAY JOHN WELCOME TO THE FRAY.

Mr. Czarnecki’s grasp of the issue and inclusion of opinions from other designers who have also taken the time to inform themselves of the issues at hand is admirable.    His journalistic scolding of Ms. Gowins and her ilk is spot on BUT….(you had to see that coming….) it is a purely defensive act in response to a much louder message that has been haunting our professional advancement for years, much as the previously mentioned rebuttals from ASID & IIDA which IMO are simply too little too late.

It is too bad Mr. Czarnecki was not around in 2007  for the Anti-regulation shot that started the entire Institute for Justice campaign to impugn the profession of Interior Design. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032101789.html

I also appreciate his subtle inference that we need it get our collective act together if we really want to move this debate from the purely defensive/reactive to a position of real progress. Maybe PROFESSIONALINTERIORDESIGNER is reading too much into this sentence;

” The rise in television programs about home decorating may have misled some of the public to believe that, well, anyone can be an interior designer. And that may have led to misconceptions about interior designers that manifest in Gowins’s article. While that’s unfortunate, it’s also an opportunity: The article might galvanize the interior design profession to present its case for legal recognition in a more unified way.”

ASID/IIDA/CIDA/NCIDQ are you paying attention?

Now all that said PROFESSIONALINTERIORDESIGNER looks forward to see if Mr. Czarnecki plays good on his pledge to provide more insight as to the state of Interior Design legislation. Moreover will he be able to truly address the crux of the ID regulation issue- right to work- without upsetting the architectural side of his readership base?

Until then we should support him as much as possible-SPREAD THE WORD.