Design made by the individual, their right to individual expression but could this still be considered noise in the visual world. Should training be enforced and if so…how? There is the danger is that by censoring the employer is no longer interested in paying for the real designer and so the accountant ends up doing it!.
Could it be that the untrained design eye will filter choices in an incomplete way and so in order to innovate it is first necessary to know your craft. Most importantly it seems that the designer is going to spend an increased amount of time validating their practice against that of the cheaper amateur. Standards.
We discussed that perhaps every designer has a price by which they would create something that contravened their sensabilities. It might also be interesting to design a model expressing the development/ responsible stages of design. From client to design brief. Fashion for example runs from the street to fashion designer to catwalk to the élite and then back to the street again in another form. It is one big loop in fashion, is it the same for graphics, are there controls in that loop or is the journey of an ideas through to design a less easy journey to map? If this is an example of how responsibility in design does not lie with one person alone then how do we take responsibility. Does ignorance mean diminished responsibility?
Other issues raised included, ban free pitching which lowers standards and sets the president that young designers must work for free in order to get ahead and actually when they do get ahead does their value suffer as a result of working for free. This devaluation process makes me think of the proliferation in the blogging community and how it lowers the standard and thus takes resources away focus the young truely talented professionals who would otherwise have support and opportunity. (‘Thinking is Over’ — John Flintoff)
Comments
I think with regards to the health of the design industry as a whole the internet is a double edged sword and there are probably parallels which other creative industries like music and publishing for which this is also the case. For on the one hand the internet makes it far easier to promote yourself and your work on a low budget. I think this is especially pertinent for designers who are just starting out, whether graduates or not and for people who live outside of the design bubble that is London. It helps level the playing field so that a student in Middlesborough can still promote their portfoilo online to potential clients and employers in London the same as a student in Hackney can without the expense of sending out printed items or train tickets to visit agencies in person. The internet helps to remove some of the disadvantages of location and budget.
However the ‘democracy’ of the interenet means that it is a lot easier for anyone to become a ‘designer’. This does have the potential to lower standards across the industry but whether this will happen to a a very noticeable degree remains to be seen as there is an awful lot of design talent out there. Whether or not it takes resources and opportunity away from people who have spent years training to be designers I don’t know. I think the issue of new designers having to work for free and free pitching is routed in market economics.
Essential there are too many designers, design is a popular subject at degree level and the number of design courses offered in the UK reflects this. A quick search on the UCAS website reveals 72 courses for Medicine versus 272 courses for Graphic Design, without including its other incarnations such as ‘Visual Communication’, ‘Graphic Communication’ etc etc. With the UK university system churning out so many new Graphic Designers every year it is unsurprising that some end up working for free. Supply is outstripping demand creating high levels of competition because all new graphic designers need industry experience and for some the only way to get that is to work for nothing.
However just because that is the way things are it does not mean to say that it is right or healthy for the industry. Nor is it democratic. Some people simply cannot afford to live on nothing or have their parents support them especially if they are taking on placements in London which has such a high cost of living and rent. Talent may be lost or neglected because a new designer’s financial constraints means that they are unable to live on nothing and get the relevant work experience and portfolio that is required to succeed in the design industry.
Design agencies are not charities and paying interns is a business decision however interns are providing a service even at a very junior level and should be paid a minimum wage that reflects and respects the fact they have skills and are contributing to the work of an agency. Having an industry supported at the bottom by unpaid interns is not a stable foundation and is not isolated to design. The claim that there isn’t money to pay interns should be addressed all the way down the chain by budgeting for interns in agency fees. If this meant that clients had to pay higher fees for work then they would have to accept that what they paid was a more accurate reflection of the work involved on a job.
This proposal would only work if all agencies took the steps to implement it else they would be undercut by ones that didn’t. This is the kind of scenario where to have a design ‘union’ or governing body of some sort that dealt with ethics and rights for designers would be highly beneficial.
This is a really important point:
However this is something I (we) need to chase up. According to the article below on the (US based) NO!SPEC website there are legal issues linked to price fixing in a free market. Unsurprisingly a cartel of designers setting on a minimum price for their work may in fact be illegal. Certainly this seems to be the case for the US but it would be worth finding out what the UK legal position is (if only I had a union to to help with legal matters…). My opnion is this: Despite the current legal situation a system or set of rules needs to be established whereby the market is unable to exploit professionals and create a race to the bottom for their work. Especially for those who are just entering it and are most vulnerable to exploitation.
president of AIGA interview at NO!SPEC
The idea of having a minimum price for work being illegal does not surprise me. I have questioned for a long time about whether the ‘free market’ can create the best conditions for all sections of an industry and all sections of a society to flourish.
On a different note, even if interns in this country were only paid the national minimum wage it would be a better situation than now, where it seems that getting your lunch paid for is considered generous. Surely this would not be illegal?
Rather forcing the issue by implementing laws couldn’t a code of conduct be drawn up? Large companies that are sensitive about their reputations could then sign up and be awarded a gold standard (or something) to show they treat designers etc. fairly. Perhaps not very realistic and a bit hippyish…
Actually I agree that perhaps this is the way forward. In the same way that in recent years environmental issues have had every company fighting to prove their ‘green credentials’. Maybe there is an approach to creating a campaign to establish benchmarks and expectations in the market place. The big challenge presumably would be making the specific challenges of the designer applicable at every level from agency to client level and beyond.