I guess it's original if it's not been done exactly the same before. But my point is that originality isn't what designers should be going for 99% of the time,

I guess it's original if it's not been done exactly the same before. But my point is that originality isn't what designers should be going for 99% of the time, even if it's a side effect. I'm sure that you follow patterns and conventions when designing an IT architecture: the combination of individual patterns you end up using, even if they've been used a million times before, still constitute a solution to the specific problem in front of you. They may be "original" in some sense, but that's beside the point: you're not aiming for originality, you're just trying to deliver whatever the best infrastructure or network architecture is for that particular usage. That's what design is, and indeed that activity itself meets all my criteria for being a design activity.