This is exactly how I see it. I just don't see how there's anything wrong with making fun designs, trying new things, hearing people's comments, etc. I am amazed that anybody felt this article was interesting enough to repost. I'm not a designer, but I do a lot of solo projects where I'm responsible for the back and front ends. I enjoy looking around on dribble for ideas and inspiration.
I dunno – I upvoted it pretty much based on this fragment:
" … but work that doesn’t address real business goals, solve real problems people have every day, or take a full business ecosystem into consideration. "
That's a conversation I have almost every day with clients, designers, co-workers, and friends.
"Pixel pushing" visual design is something that some people are very highly skilled at – and the difference between good visual design and bad visual design is obvious even to those of us without the skills to create "good design", _BUT_, in terms of a product or web project it's the last ~20% of the time/money budget. Unless you've got (in the article's terms) the "Mission" and "Vision" properly articulated, and then the "Outcome", "Structure", and "Interaction" properly thought through, you don't really have enough actionable data or goals to appropriately brief a visual designer.
(Having said that, for some businesses and budgets, choosing "existing artwork" and jamming your businesses specific requirements into it might be the right way to go - the same way as most retail stores don't build spaces like Apple Stores, but make compromises based on what's available for rent in the area they want to trade, then "making do" with the space/architecture they end up with. I've helped many clients build inexpensive websites by articulating the solutions to the business problems, then cutting costs by choosing something off somewhere like ThemeForest that's "close enough" and either living with the deficiencys or bodging/hacking over them like a quick paintjob instead of a major shop refitout…)
