I’m a final year student doing Design For Industry at Northumbria University, UK. I am currently researching my dissertation and value the opinions of designers who make the effort to participate in open disscusion forums such as this.
My dissertation will focus on how buisness is effecting our creativity (in it’s traditional sense rather than creative compromise). As students we are encouraged to back up virtually every project with social and environmental responability. Yet corporatate law states that everything the corperation does must make profit for its shareholders, it lacks the legal ability to do any selfless good deeds for the world if you like. That is not to say that a corporation cannot design an eco-freindly product and make a loss on it, if it proves that the possitive image of the company will increase sales.
I’d like to hear your opinions on how buisness has affected your design integrity. Should a beautifull mp3 player deserve more admiration than a product that saves someones life?
I’m not trying to fuel a debate, I’m not a left wing student hippy, out of touch with the real world. I understand that the industry is very much removed from some of the design we do as students. I simply want to hear your opinions, examples, and BOTH SIDES of the argument!
One more ask, if you are willing for your comments to form part of my dissertation please leave your real name, and proffession. If not your comments will still help!!
Are you asking: How does the corporate environment impact designer’s creativity and ability to produce with design integrity? OR How does a designer include eco-design principles within a corporate environment?
to the 1st, I’d say greater restrictions/preconditions forces greater creativity.
to the 2nd, I’d respond that it’s probably more difficult to create an eco (consumer) product the larger the market becomes - as the need for homogenaity and cost pressures increase.
That isn’t a law, outright. The shareholders get to determine, generally through a board of directors and other processes, what the corporation does.
The Company Reform Bill is currently going through the British Parliment,
it makes perfectly clear that the primary concern of directors is the success of the company and its shareholders, success meaning profit.
This is the law and corporations have been taken to court ever since the famous Dodge v Ford case of 1916, where Henry Ford reduced prices and increased wages, instead of giving a dividend. He lost on the principle that he had used shareholders money to benefit others.
There is often a bottom-line savings for doing things in a cleaner, safer way
I’m not saying that nothing corporations do can benifit society, the environment and shareholders together. However if they do something in a cleaner safer way they do it to make the savings and for no other reason, if it were cheaper to do things in a dirtier more hazerdous way, they would be obliged to by law.
This post is not to discuss the ins and out of corperate law it is to hear your views on how buisness has an influence on your creativity and your ability to design resposibly.
I’m really asking both, but as a student they virtually always overlap. Almost everything we are asked to design needs to take into account the society and the environment. However the corperate world is the complete opposite.
So what I’m really asking is; Do you think design resposibility is important? If so what problems do you come across when hired by a corporation?
I’d say greater restrictions/preconditions forces greater creativity.
I guess it depends on what restrictions/preconditions you feel are important. The client is always right, but can we as designers never question them? Can we afford to? Or is that in itself bad buisness?
I’d like to hear your opinions on how buisness has affected your design integrity
There are many things in corporations which conspire against creativity and “design integrity.” Namely:
The phsyical environment of business: is antithetical to a creative environment. Cube farms and a sealed envirionment with recycled air. Is typically far from the actual context of use and far from sources of inspiration and mind/body stimulation and balance.
The way business is structured: Fixed working hours. Weekly meetings that serve more as status updates rather than group working sessions. Constant distractions including the expectation of constant communication. Departments which are structured around their function (ie. Engineering, Marketing) rather than structured around the end goal (delivering great experiences.) “2 weeks per year” vacations (common in the US.)
The culture of creativity: Designers are outnumbered by thousands to one in the corporate world and are therefore considered different or special (my organization employs 55,000 and less than 10 designers.) In the US, people are convinced that they are “creative” or not from a very early age and fine arts aren’t stressed in higher education.
But it’s not all bad… What about business that enables creativity?
The Business of Design: getting paid to be a designer means being given a reason to come into work everyday and focus on design! It also means that new tools and methods are constantly being developed. Design has become strategic and as a result, we understand design and creativity so much better today than 50 years ago.
The Innovation Imperative: Drucker was right, innovate or die. And today, innovation means design. Today design has a seat at the table as a result. We have our first billionaire Industrial Designer (James Dyson) and “Chief Design Officers.”
I’m not trying to fuel a debate, I’m not a left wing student hippy, out of touch with the real world. I understand that the industry is very much removed from some of the design we do as students. I simply want to hear your opinions, examples, and BOTH SIDES of the argument!
This a poor start. Why not fuel a debate ?
Corporations love those who are inside the box. But often those inside cannot stretch their minds and abilities to the point where they can make money. They are too busy with ALL SIDES of the argument.
So this burden of making something interesting – for those inside the box – in the hope that it might interest the consumer finally falls on the designer. Hippy types generally make it - check out Steve Jobs.