WESTERNER OR ASIAN?

edmund_180779 · July 3, 2006, 9:48am

alrite, go blondes! woo hoo!!!

csven:

“Aian designers are good, and cheap”

And what is this comment based upon?

Pricing is leveling. There are Asian firms that submit higher bids than I do now, and I live on the U.S. East Coast.

So much for “cheap”.

The advantage they now (supposedly) have is that they understand manufacturing better than Western designers. Perhaps. But my experience is that the IDers in China, for example, are sensitive to the manufacturing constraints of their company. That’s different than understanding manufacturing and offering options that sometimes are outside the realm of a particular company’s expertise.

So much for “good” (by my definition).

Also, there seems to be less cross-industry movement in China (and maybe Asia in general); that’s just my perception and what I’ve been told by some Chinese design acquaintainces. A lack of cross-industry experience leads to a kind of inbreeding of ideas and processes. However, I am starting to notice the same thing here in the U.S., so it’s a bigger problem maybe affecting the entire industry. Worse but maybe getting better in Asia; better but getting worse in the U.S.

One question that often comes up is whether Asian (and by that I’m talking now about Chinese since there are going to be so many in the near future) designers can be as creative as their Western counterparts. I tend to side with those who say that the culture is not currently conducive to fostering creativity in the same way as in the West (and among those who say this are Chinese designers). There are certainly creative designers in Asia. But will they have the same percentage of creatives? Not now, imo. I think it will change, but that takes more than 5 or 10 years. Easy enough to train people on software. Or how to sketch variation #117 of the same product. Not so easy to rewire a lifetime’s worth of cultural inhibitions and have a junior designer tell his boss that the design direction being handed down is outdated; or the solution is overly derivative. First the culture has to recognize the value (which it seems to be doing) and second a new kind of person has to come who can then be trained to be much more individualistic and, to some degree, confrontational. I give it another 20 years.

The problem with that timeline is that Design in general is becoming a commodity. In 20 years the field will be dead anyway imo… fragmented into two general occupations: one corporate and designing giveaway product (like cell phones) tied to services (cell phone service), the other independent and designing/selling their own products on sites like Etsy and eBay (which is where you’ll find me).

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens. Either way, I’m not feeling threatened. I’m happy to compete with anyone. Forget the software (which I know) or the concept art (which I can generate), I’ll gladly compete in the arena of ideas, which is where the Design I care about is moving. The “me too” stuff is commodity junk and whoever winds up doing it will watch their salary erode where ever they live.

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WESTERNER OR ASIAN?

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