I wonder why it seems so hard for some people to trust skill.
If a designer can carve out a result we hope for without benefit of scientific rigor or engineering norms, is it any less valuable?
There seems to be a pervasive sentiment in modern culture that good old skills are somehow less valuable than the quantifiable repeatable processes. Perhaps this is because skills can't be repeated, stamped out of a factory, or put onto a shelf. They are not a safe bet.
When engineer Darren and I voice a loudspeaker it's a skill we cannot just hand off to others or duplicate with a computer. It's personal and it is earned.
I imagine that's a little frightening to some—to not be able to point to an exotic construction technique, material, or technology other than just skill when explaining why our product sounds the way it does. That's the nature of handcrafted.
The good news is once the skill has been applied and success has been achieved, we can then duplicate the results over and over again so others can share in the benefits of the designer's skills.
It's certainly safer to spout a formula or tout a computer model as the answer, but it's rarely going to result in much above good.
Great often takes skill.
