How do you define an under-utilised graduate?

My current research is looking at the way in which the design industry uses graduates of any subject in design and non-design roles (according to the Design Council only 15% of the UK design consultancy sector is made up of designers, and only 40% of those are graduates).

One of the central theses is that the design industry is not very good at utilising graduates, especially in design-related roles, compared with other industries. (This varies - I suspect that the service design sector does better here than the fashion sector but that some areas of fashion are better than others. The term "the design industry" is problematic).

An early issue in the research has been "how do you define a graduate position"? Mason (1999) studied the chemistry, steel and financial sectors and found that when the supply of graduates started to increase in the early 1990s different sectors took different routes. The steel industry started upgrading a lot of previously "non-graduate" roles so that they took advantage of graduate skills and knowledge, or began creating new roles to attract talent and benefit from what was available. In particular, they began to expand their employment of graduates in roles related to design of products and systems*.
The finance industry, on the other hand, simply replaced non-graduates with graduates often without changing the roles they were expected to do. This he views (rightly) as under-utliisation of graduates.

I suspect the UK design industry is more like the finance sector than manufacturing in this regard. The campaign by representatives of the fashion and textiles industries, Skillfast-UK, to get universities and colleges to ensure graduates are skilled to be pattern cutters is an obvious example of under-utilisation of graduates. But I'm also interested in how graduates from non-design disciplines are used, for example those from English, accounting, law and business. I have a suspicion that there may be a significant difference which points to a failure to acknowledge the potential degree-level design qualifications offer. However it will be interesting if there is widespread under-utlilisation of graduates in all areas of the design business. This would certainly change the current emphasis on blaming educators for the perceived malaise in the design sector and instead focus on how the industry recruits and uses graduate talent.

A common definition of "graduate level" employment is simply one of responsibility. Is a graduate employed in a role with some strategic responsibility, with a degree of autonomy? It's not a satisfactory definition because you could categorise a lot of jobs in this way: someone working behind a perfume counter could be argued to be autonomous and to have responsibility to meet sales targets using their initiative. But basically working in a shop like that is not viewed as a graduate-level job while managing a branch of a large retail chain is. To many, including me, the reasons are obvious but the problem is explaining why. And linked to this is another issue, which is a value judgement. To many, managing a branch of a major retailer is not seen as "worthwhile" - I can imagine several former colleagues of mine thinking a graduate of theirs were a failure if this is what happened to them. And it leads to contradictions: a jewellery graduate working in a jewellers is probably seen by some to be working in a related field to their degree** while another who is training to be a police officer with fast track promotion is not. The former is in a non-graduate design-related post while the latter is in a graduate but non-design related post.
So who is better utilised? And of whom should we be prouder?

Something I found useful in Mason's paper is a set of three simple criteria for judging whether a graduate is being utilised properly or not, and which removes the value judgement. I mapped these as a flow-chart for ease of reference:

(The third criterion may be problematic for some but Mason explains it: "The latter condition is one way of testing for the possibility that graduate performance in unchanged jobs is significantly better than that of non- graduates and is recognised as such in higher salaries" - in other words, is the graduate performing better and being recognised as such even though the role does not meet the first two criteria).

This of course strips out questions of whether the job is a good one, if the graduate is enjoying it and so on, but I suspect it is value judgements like those that need to be removed from the equation, at least at the initial stage because it points to company policy towards graduates. Questions of whether the jobs are challenging, enjoyable, offer paths to promotion etc are important but can be tackled later. What the flowchart offers is a quick and simple way of evaluating if a graduate is being utilised as a graduate and this will tell us about the company's attitude to graduates - are they employed strategically or seen simply as people to fill vacancies? In Mason's research, the steel industry was doing this very well, while the finance industry used the sudden growth in graduate numbers to place graduates in to jobs traditionally taken on by school leavers.***

With some adaptation I think this flowchart could be a useful tool for very quickly judging if a design company is utilising its graduate workforce. If the artworkers are a mix of graduates and non-graduates, all on similar salaries, then the answer is no. If the pattern cutters are all graduates, the answer is no.
And if it turns out that agency X is utilising its non-design graduates well, according to the tool above, but under-utilising its design graduates, it points to a further issue which I'll let you ponder.

My suspicion is that "the industry" is a mixed picture. That there are some companies that make good use of graduates from all disciplines, there are some that do not, and there are some that value graduates in some areas of its business more than others (e.g. a graduate in a business management role compared with a graduate artworker or pattern cutter).
What's important is that the tool be used not to condemn those that don't do it, but to educate them. It's far better to change expectations and understanding of what a graduate offers a design company than to alter courses to meet incorrect beliefs. Instead of changing all fashion courses so that graduates are well-trained pattern cutters, we should change the fashion industry's recruitment strategy so that it hires school leavers or manual workers from other sectors and trains them, and recruits graduates in to more strategic roles.

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Mason. (1999) Graduate Utilisation and the Quality of Higher Education in the UK. www.niesr.ac.uk

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*It's worth noting that despite what the design industry thinks, designers do not just work in design companies, but in-house. In this regard, its claims to be the "customers" of design courses are questionable. That would be like tabloid readers demanding that a newsagent stops selling broadsheets. Makes sense to the tabloid readers, but little sense to the shopkeeper.

**(And the former student will be seen by many in academia as "on their way" - it's often claimed that design graduates take their time to make their mark which is an argument I get annoyed with. Barristers make their mark from day one. So do doctors, nurses, teachers. Why does the design industry think it's okay that graduate talent languishes behind shop counters or in pattern cutting rooms? What if we changed that?)

***This, of course, inflates the number of graduates because if the only way to get an entry-level job is to get a degree, there'll be a growth in demand for degrees. And if the only jobs on offer to graduates are entry-level, why bother putting in much effort? You can see where this argument leads: claims that the quality of graduates is dropping may be better explained either by the quality of the jobs on offer (advertising an entry-level job to graduates is not going to attract the best candidates) or by the minimum requirements (a degree). To further complicate things, expecting a graduate to have "school leaver" skills (a famous designer who shall remain nameless once complained he couldn't find a design graduate who knew how to answer his phone properly) will only lead to a perceived lack of quality. If you hire a French speaker to deal with your Spanish customers, whose to blame when you find they're not very good at it? Similarly, then, if you hire a design graduate to cut cloth, where should you look when it turns out they can't do it?

Designers win medals too

This is something I wrote for the study guide for my Design History, Theory and Practice (DHTP) module which starts next week. The first lecture asks "what's the point of DHTP?" and I try to head off the usual complaints about having to write and read and go to the library. I've found spending the first lecture on making the case for approaching design from an intellectual point of view not only saves time later, it tends to improve attendance and grades!

Plus, I happen to believe in it.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics offered a showcase not just of excellence in sport, but in design as well. Everything from the equipment being used to the garments being worn was designed. Ask the average person what we mean by this and they will undoubtedly talk about what things look like - the ‘style’ of the outfits, the shape of the bikes and so on.

But to take a view like that is to miss what we might arguably call the ‘real’ design, the design that’s the product of years (if not decades) of intense research into textiles, alloys, aerodynamics, ergonomics and more. When people talk of the millions of pounds spent on sports in the UK, they may think that all gets spent on training. But it doesn’t. Chris Hoy’s bike, Rebbeca Adlington’s swimming costume, Charlotte Burgess’s bow, and Deborah Brennan’s wheelchair are all the result of investment worldwide in design research.

And then there are the games themselves - everything from the obvious opening and closing ceremonies to the transport networks, the global television feeds, the ticketing systems, the catering, even the queues — all designed.

Design history and theory are no longer simply endless slideshows of the great and the good; pictures of this designer and that piece. Over the next three years you’ll be exposed to, and encouraged to discover, not what’s gone before but what’s possible. DHTP is about the future as much as it’s about the past. It’s also about broadening your view of what design is, from the ‘man on the street’ idea of design as style to something a little more ambitious and all-encompassing. And it’s about encouraging you to pursue a role in the cutting edge through your own research.

If I get the time, I'm going to do a video to go with it too...

Designers asked by UK Government to tackle MRSA

Design Week is reporting that five UK design consultancies are being sought by the Department of Health and the Design Council to collaboratte with scientists and healthcare professionals. They will be asked to develop "innovative design-led hospital furniture and equipment that could improve cleaning and reduce patients’ exposure to healthcare-acquired infections".

The programme, called "Design Bugs Out" starts with a briefing on 2 September and will focus on research in three hospitals, identifying key problem areas.

Having identified five key areas, each team will be asked to focus on one and given a £25,000 grant.
After the closing date for submissions on 10 October, final teams will be announced ten days later and given seven weeks to develop prototypes. Winning designs will be exhibited next summer.

Indie Fever

Michiel van Meeteren (University of Amsterdam) has published a study of the Macintosh independent programming community as a PDF. It looks like it might be interesting to anyone involved in programming, but also has wider implications for the studies of communities of practice and how people share knowledge to improve their own skills - in other words 'design thinking' in general.

Excerpted from Michiel's website: "
 

‘Indie Fever’ is the first result of a multi-year human geography research program to investigate the social and economical world of so-called ‘Indie’ developers on the Macintosh platform.  ‘Indie’ is the self-chosen nickname of software developers that serve worldwide markets from the Internet, hold their artistic values in high esteem and celebrate their ability to make high quality software as small companies.  [...]

Indies have organized themselves informally but strongly in a virtual community.  Although they are scattered over several continents, they continuously interact over the Internet, share rumors and code, and discuss business and private interests as if they were coworkers while –technically– they are competitors.  They share a common culture which is intertwined with the history of the platform they develop for and the Cocoa programming environment in particular. [...] it analyses how Indies sustain and reproduce their particular culture primarily through online means, something that is argued to be rather difficult in the social-scientific discourse.

Almost 50 hours of interviews were recorded for Indie Fever.  These interviews were combined with the results of extensive data mining of blogs and other online resources.  The resulting thesis focusses on both the cultural and economical aspects of the Mac Indie world and the ways these reinforce each other by applying theories of, amongst others, Pierre Bourdieu, Michael Porter, Norbert Elias, Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell."

Bourdieu and Gladwell, eh? That's basically my reading list for my first years...


Check out the site for a link to the PDF (I would link here but I suspect Michiel would like to track numbers). There's also a blog related to the research project.

Coincidentally, at the same time I heard about this I also read several reports about a new website launched by developers of iPhone apps for whom the Non-disclosure agreement they effectively signed with Apple means they are forbidden from sharing knowledge and tips - precisely one of the things that defines the indie culture. When you see the title of the site you'll see they're not best pleased with the restriction. According to a publisher (I forget the link, sorry) the NDA is also holding up publication of books on iPhone programming.

BBC News reports "Warning over universities' future"

This article from the BBC backs up perfectly the predictions being made at New Views 2:

Some universities will face closure or merger as they struggle to compete for a dwindling number of students over the next 20 years, vice-chancellors warn.

A report for umbrella body Universities UK says unless institutions adapt quickly to the changing demographics, some institutions will become unviable.

The number of 18 to 20-year-olds is set to fall sharply between 2009 and 2027.
This means universities could face a smaller demand for places and hence a drop in public funding, it says.
The Universities UK report looks at three different scenarios predicting what will happen if institutions react in different ways to the changing demographics and a more difficult economic climate.

[...]

In the second scenario, non-traditional private providers enter the market pace and "cherry pick" course areas with low entry costs.
A greater increase in e-learning also leads to partnerships with private firms. [...]
In this scenario, damage to the education system is predicted as private providers gain degree awarding powers and a small number of elite institutions seek to leave the publicly funded sector.

In the third scenario, the university sector becomes more employer-driven and flexible and there is full development of technology-based learning thanks to public and private investment.
Most students end up studying part-time on a virtual basis while they continue to work, but full-time undergraduate study does remain part of the system.
This leads to universities grouping together strategically with employers and establishing themselves as major regional providers along side further education colleges.
Again, private providers cherry-pick vocational provision which will net them substantial profits and they also take over failing institutions.

What this report suggests is that if design education is to survive as a university subject, it has to let go of its vocational roots, no longer training designers (leaving that to the FE sector and private colleges) but educating strategic thinkers. Exactly what we concluded.

It's magic!

I'm giving a paper in New York in April on the way in which some design writers and designers describe creativity in almost magical terms.
Last night I woke up with an idea floating round my head - I want to do something a bit different from the usual dry conference paper and thought it might be an idea to write 'extracts' from books that feature magic but reinterpreted slightly.

Here's my first attempt:

Gandalf looked at Frodo carefully. “Where is the ring?” he asked the hobbit.

“The ring?” stammered Frodo, trying not to look over to the fireplace where he had left the letter from his uncle.

“The ring” Gandalf repeated, moving slowly towards his little friend.

“Oh, that” said Frodo, giving in under the pressure of the wizard’s stare. He pointed to the hearth. “It’s over there. I don’t see what’s so special about it.”

Gandalf rose up - or as far as he could in the small burrow - and took a deep breath as he turned to see the open envelope. His eyes narrowed as he glimpsed a glint of cold metal. The ring!

In a pace he was there, picking up the envelope and allowing the ring to fall inside. But as it touched the bottom of the envelope and came close to his palm it seemed to burn him. Cursing, Gandalf let go of the package and it fell into the fire, incinerating the paper and leaving the ring sitting nestled in flame. “Now you will see what is so special about the ring,” he murmured to Frodo.

The hobbit crept forwards and, half hiding behind Gandalf he gazed in to the flames, expecting to see the ring melting on the coals. Instead he saw… “What’s happening?” he whispered.

“Magic!” exclaimed Gandalf. “No! Better than magic!” he corrected himself, grabbing a poker and pulling the glowing ring from the ashes. Frodo leant forwards to see a mysterious Elvish script engraved onto its surface. “ The ancient magic!” shouted Gandalf, “Typography!”

He stopped suddenly and peered intently at the cooling metal, grabbing it from the poker and, wincing slightly at the heat, he let his eyes drop, giving out a disappointed ‘Oh”.

“What’s wrong?” said Frodo, worried at the disappointment in his friend’s normally sparkling eyes.

Gandalf turned to face him slowly, a look of disgust on his face. He showed the ring to Frodo, the strange Elvish words still dancing with flame. “It’s Comic Sans”, he said. “I hate that font”.

A Vision of Students Today

Yes, the earth moved. Proof at last!

You see, this is what academic research is all about. Sorting out age-old arguments!

"The Quirkology team has joined forces with Professor John C. Brown, Astronomer Royal for
Scotland,to provide an answer to the age-old question "did the earth move for you?"
The answer, it seems, is always yes, but we have gone all the way to find out just how far."

Work out your prowess here.

New push to design against crime

According to the BBC:

"The government is launching a new drive to cut crime through innovative design.
It wants designers to develop new theft-proof products to try to reduce the number of items being stolen.

These would include things such as theft-proof bikes and buildings which are more difficult to break into.

The Home Office says one example is the 51 per cent fall in vehicle crime which can be attributed to design improvements such as immobilisers and toughened glass.

The Design and Technology Alliance will be made up of a panel of independent experts, who will work with the design industry to develop new products.

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said clever designs alone cannot stop a criminal.

'Designing to prevent a crime isn't the only solution. Of course tough law enforcement goes alongside that and criminals will always try to get round the new techniques that are in place.

'But I think that what you can say is that improved design makes a phenomenal difference.'"

See also:

Design Against Crime

The Home Office Design Against Crime site

DAC @ Central St Martins

The secret of great photography? Use someone else's...

BBC News reports:

Digital photographers could soon be able to erase unwanted elements in photos by using tools that scan for similar images in online libraries.
Research teams have developed an algorithm that uses sites like Flickr to help discover light sources, camera position and composition in a photo.

Using this data the tools then search for objects, such as landscapes or cars, that match the original.

The teams aim to create image libraries that anyone can use to edit snaps.

James Hays and Alexei Efros from Carnegie Mellon University have developed an algorithm to help people who want to remove bits of photographs.

The parts being removed could be unsightly lorries in the snaps of the rural idyll where they took a holiday or even an old boyfriend or girlfriend they want to rub out from a photograph.

(In the example above, the house in the first photo has been isolated and replaced with boats and the rest of the lake found in someone else's photo of the same scene, taken at a different spot)

To find suitable matching elements, the research duo's algorithm looks through a database of 2.3 million images culled from Flickr.

'We search for other scenes that share as closely as possible the same semantic scene data,' said Mr Hays, who has been showing off the project at the computer graphics conference Siggraph, in San Diego.

In this sense 'semantic' means composition. So a snap of a lake in the foreground, hills in a band in the middle and sunset above has, as far as the algorithm is concerned, very different 'semantics' to one of a city with a river running through it.

The broad-based analysis cuts out more than 99.9% of the images in the database, said Mr Hays. The algorithm then picks the closest 200 for further analysis.

Next the algorithm searches the 200 to see if they have elements, such as hillsides or even buildings, the right size and colours for the hole to be filled.

The useful parts of the 20 best scenes are then cropped, added to the image being edited so the best fit can be chosen.

Early tests of the algorithm show that only 30% of the images altered with it could be spotted, said Mr Hays.

The other approach aims to use net-based image libraries to create a clip-art of objects that, once inserted into a photograph, look convincing.


'We want to generate objects of high realism while keeping the ease of use of a clip art library,' said Jean-Francois Lalonde of Carnegie Mellon University who led the research.

To generate its clip art for photographs the team has drawn on the net's Label Me library of images which has many objects, such as people, trees and cars, cut out and tagged by its users.

The challenge, said Mr Lalonde, was working out which images in the Label Me database will be useful and convincing when inserted into photographs.

The algorithm developed by Mr Lalonde and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft Research analyses scenes to find out the orientation of objects and the sources of light in a scene.

'We use the height of the people in the image to estimate the height of the camera used to take the picture,' he said.

The light sources in a scene are worked out by looking at the distribution of colour shades within three broad regions, ground, vertical planes and sky, in the image.

With knowledge about the position, pitch and height of the camera and light sources the algorithm then looks for images in the clip art database that were taken from similar positions and with similar pixel heights.

The group has created an interface for the database of photo clipart so people can pick which elements they want to add to a scene."

Proof that design is important

Dundee University in the news again. And this time it backs up what I was saying about how design at university should be so much more than just producing Mac monkeys, even at undergraduate level.

(I saw some of these images earlier this year and they're a bit 'odd' (I can't think of the word I want - 'odd' isn't right) - they make serious illnesses look almost beautiful...)

(Click here to watch a video)

"Doctors are turning to graphic artists to help patients better understand their illness and course of treatment.

The artists turn medical images from 3D anatomical scans into less formidable forms, suitable for patients.

Trials of the system have shown it can aid understanding and deepen dialogue between patients and their care givers.

The system is also being used as part of a project to raise awareness among diabetics of some of the most serious side-effects of their condition.

'Doctors talk shop, which can be difficult for patients to penetrate,' said John McGhee, a PhD student and 3D computer artist from the University of Dundee, who helped to direct the visualisation project.

The tools and methods used to pass on information about illnesses and cures were as various as the doctors themselves, Mr McGhee said.

'None are that great,' he said.

But, by producing simplified images from detailed MRI scans, for example, patients can get a far better grasp of what is happening inside them, how it came about, and what is being done about it, he said.



(image of cancer cells)

The effect of the images has been used in a study of 18 patients suffering from arteriosclerosis, an illness that causes hardening of the arteries which can, over time, lead to heart attacks and stroke.

Initially, Mr McGhee said, the trial was all about whether the patients - average age 71 - could understand what the images depicted.

But, he said, it proved its effectiveness in other ways too.

'It was about imparting information but more importantly about getting a dialogue going on to help to get the patient discussing what is going on,' he said.

Exposure to the images also helped in subsequent discussions, said Mr McGhee.

'When they talk to health professionals and go armed with better questions and knowledge of their anatomy,' he said.

In a related project, computer graphics derived from medical images are being used in a bid to prompt diabetics to keep an eye on their health.

Run by PhD student Emma Fyfe, also from the University of Dundee, the project has produced a five minute film that explores the effect diabetes has on the retina.

In some cases diabetes can cause abnormalities in the blood vessels serving the retina and make sight deteriorate.

It was important for diabetics to have regular scans to catch the side effects of diabetes at the earliest opportunity, she said.

'If they catch it early they can stop it,' said Ms Fyfe. 'But they cannot go backwards; they cannot cure it.'

The film has been shown to the Scottish Diabetes Group and there are plans to show it to other groups around the UK.

The research was shown off at the Siggraph computer graphics convention being held in San Diego, US from 5-9 August."

Is design important?

From BBC news:

"A schizophrenia drug developed at Dundee University is to be tested as a new cancer treatment.
Ground-breaking research has revealed Rimcazole can also be used to fight cancer.

Scientists have discovered it restricts the growth of tumours and kills cancer cells, but has little toxic effect on healthy tissue.

Clinical trials will get under way later this year, with conclusive results expected within two years."

About a year ago, I moved in to my new flat and a man came round to install my telephone line (the previous occupant having, for some reason, carved through the old one with a bread knife).

We got chatting, as you do, and he asked me what I did for a living. I told him I teach at the university. He seemed impressed: "you'll be one of those people curing cancer then?"

"Er, not quite. I teach design history".

End of conversation (though he did later start telling me stories about Prince William's nights out in Dundee when he was studying down the road at St. Andrew's).

I can see the centre mentioned in that news report, where they work on cancer cures, from my office window, and occasionally I go to the little 'restaurant' they have there. It's full of people who look like the ones you used to go to school with who were good at science and liked wearing lab coats and big goggles. It's odd comparing it to the 'Cantina', the design school's refectory which, despite being open to all is monopolised by art and design students and staff who all seem keen to stand out from the crowd and manage, somehow, to look like one homogenous group.

But there's a quiet air of determination in the life sciences restaurant, as though everyone knows they're working on something important, and having lunch is an inconvenient truth their education manages to nag them with in a way their stomach can't. I walked past that building on Christmas Day and again on New Year's Eve and the lights were on, cars were parked, and people were at work. I suppose petri dishes don't do vacations.

So when I look out of my office window (something I save for the afternoon so I'm always sure I'll have something to do...) I can't help remembering that conversation with the telephone guy and my sense of guilt that I don't work on something as important as my colleagues in the white coats, many of whom probably get paid far less than me.

But should I feel guilty?

I think this is one of the things that should define design study at university. It shouldn't be about simply learning and repeating the skills needed to get a job, but about trying to understand how design works and how it can improve people's lives.
A presentation I went to earlier this year by researchers looking at the nearby Frank Gehry-designed cancer care centre, Maggie's Centre Dundee showed a real link between the design of buildings and the rate of improvement in patient health, irrespective of the drugs they were on, and other studies looking at the working space for nurses showed design to be an undervalued contributor to healthcare - a hospital is more than a set of rooms with beds and a few chairs and filing cabinets. Yet any hospital that spends money on good funiture and art for the walls will be accused of wasting money - why aren't we getting that message across more? Why do academics like talking to themselves so much but so rarely tell their stories to others?

If you look at many of the top concerns for people in the UK (and elsewhere) such as crime, terrorism, the economy, the environment and so on, there is a clear (and sometimes not so clear) role that design can play in each of these.
And it's the university's role to explore these - not just at the postgrad research level and beyond but at the undergraduate level as well.

Design is important. It will never win a PR war against cures for cancer (which, incidentally, are also 'designed', even if by accident as in the story above) and perhaps we should stop with the gnashing of teeth about this. But I can't help feeling that a philosophy for university-based design has to stop obsessing with churning out employees for a shockingly visionless and often amoral industry and start seeing its contribution in terms of changing society for the better.

Cultural Studies Now

I'm speaking at this conference on 21st July. My paper looks at how design students respond to cultural studies which appears to be replacing traditional 'heroic' design history on courses. I won't give the conclusions away except to say 'it's a good thing'.
And to critics who wonder what happens to design history? It's still there, only this way students engage in it rather than passively receive it. Sure, you'll sell fewer books, but it's about time design history started being interesting and critical rather than simply celebratory.

I'll post the summary of my presentation here after the conference (my holiday starts the day after and I'm ready for it!)

Cultural Studies Now

A major conference at the University of East London

July 19th - 22nd 2007

http://www.uel.ac.uk/culturalstudiesnow

In a technocratic age of cosmopolitan capitalism, is there still a place for a Cultural Studies which is both
politically committed and relentlessly experimental in its intellectual, institutional and creative practices?

Cultural Studies Now will be the largest conference of its kind to have been held in the UK for many years. Explicitly addressing the present, past and future fate of the discipline conceived as a radical intellectual project, the conference will feature over 100 panels on a wide range of topics, with contributors from every continent. Keynote addresses will come from Ien Ang, Rosi Braidotti, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Jeremy Gilbert, Alan Grossman, Judith Halberstam, Stuart Hall, Dick Hebdige, Doreen Massey, Áine O'Brien and Horace Ové.

Registration (including food by Leon Lewis):

Full conference £200 (students and concessions £140)
day rate £60 (students and concessions £45)

Only two weeks left to book your place!

Please see our website for full details and registration:

A culture change is needed - but in industry or academia?

One of the issues that keeps coming up in my current research project is the complaint from certain sectors of the design industry that they are not seeing the same quality of graduates that existed before (in the mythical 'olden days' presumably). I posted last week about how I thought that was so much rubbish, and could even be argued against using basic maths.
The complaints are based on anecdotal evidence from employers but there are two real problems with this: firstly, it's anecdotal evidence. If things were really so bad then the British design industry would be in the pits, so there's no actual evidence of such a decline. Secondly, it's been said for years - in fact I can't remember a year when exam results in the UK weren't met with a press release from the Confederation of British Industry moaning about falling standards.
What we really mean by falling standards is that I can't believe kids these days don't know when the Battle of Hastings was, or who Edward Heath and Richard Nixon were. Whereas I remind myself that when I was sixteen I couldn't do half the things today's kids can, the 'suits' confuse trivia for knowledge. I suppose if you were recruiting on the basis of putting a winning pub quiz team together you could rightfully complain about 'falling standards', but otherwise, I'm not sure you can.

Anecdotal evidence has its value, mind you. I'm a big fan of it (especially when it supports my point of view!) and I think it's wrongly frowned upon in academia. My own anecdotal evidence, based on many conversations with students and graduates, suggests that contrary to what employers are saying, we are producing 'quality' graduates. And I agree that employers aren't seeing them. How can both sides of the story be true?

Simple: the qualities, not the actual quality, are changing, and the things that mark out a high quality graduate these days, certainly in graphic design, are cynicism and scepticism, a healthy distrust and dislike of the way a lot of businesses work, and a growing preference for a job and lifestyle that contents them, rather than propels them on a glittering career and wealth. (I suspect those things may change as they get older, of course...)
In other words, the reason a lot of design firms in the UK are complaining that they are not seeing the same number of top quality graduates applying for jobs is not because the quality of teaching has dropped, but because those graduates are more choosy about who they go and work for. The tradition in the design industry of undertaking unpaid work placements, and then accepting poorly-paid 'trial periods' is something that today's cash-strapped and culturally-aware graduates are no longer willing to take part in, and a good design graduate would rather take a post in an independent coffee shop than work in a soulless office all the hours God sends for little or no pay (this is what the 'suits' call 'passion' incidentally).

And that's not a crazy comparison, as though working in a coffee shop is a really menial thing just one step above being a designer. As Richard Florida points out in The Rise Of The Creative Class, in today's cafe culture jobs like this are seen as fulfilling ones for the people you meet, the conversations you have and so on (we're talking about arty, independent cafes here, not your greasy spoons and chains). While 'suits' think having a workforce of waitresses and hairdressers with degrees in English Literature is a sign of educational oversupply, I think it's a sign of a society that values knowledge and creativity.
It seems odd that the body that represents the creative industries in the UK seems hell-bent on stamping out the very things it depends on, not just because designers use them, but because so do clients and consumers.

These thoughts were reinforced for me today by an entry over on Florida's blog. It's worth noting that Creative and Cultural Skills, the body I'm talking about, uses Florida to make their case about closing courses, building artificial communities of creative people servicing communities of bio-scientists, businessmen and so on. It's clear they've never actually read his book beyond the introduction, if that. In calling for things such as a more business-oriented approach to design education, less frivolous (i.e. no fun, I assume) and less interdisciplinary in social terms, they actually contradict a lot of what Rise suggests is needed to nurture creativity. He makes the points again today in response to an article in the New York Times:

Three things crossed my mindas I read the story and scanned its pictures, which interestingly enough appeared in the fashion and style section and not the business section.

• (1) You can't pump creative work out of people, assembly-line style.' Motivating this kind of mental work requires a new kind of' workplace, one that appears to be nurturing,' attuned to individuality, and 'fun'-' a trend I dubbed 'soft-control' in Rise.



• (2) It's a mistake to see this stuff as all frills and perks. Companies are doing it because it is increasingly required to attract top talent.' Offering a stimulating environment, flexible work hours, and the ability to be 'yourself' is an effective and relatively 'cheap' way of competing against, say, investment banks and hedge-funds.



• (3)' Scanning the photos, I was struck by the similarity between these new work-spaces and college dorm rooms, where so many of these high-tech companies come from, or even the play-spaces of middle age teenagers. Could it be that the demographic trends toward postponed marriage, extended single years and what Ethan Watters dubbed the 'urban tribe' are being projected into the work-place?

(Via The Creativity Exchange.)

Those graduates the industry say they are not seeing will not magically show up because you put a pool table in the studio or let people play music (something, incidentally, that drives me mad - I would never work anywhere I was subjected to other people's music!) but only when the entire culture of the employer changes. And yet there's a long way to go before unpaid placements, long hours, 'flexible contracts' and other strange practices are consigned to history. Will these things ever happen? Well it's telling that the industry bodies think it would be easier to force university courses to turn out exactly the type of graduates they want (i.e. willing to work for nothing, over long hours, and with little job security) than to change industry practice.

Another reason why the 'business' approach to design teaching is wrong

I think [design schools] have a good shot at helping the university turn out capable innovators. They are better positioned, for instance, than [business schools].

For one thing the design schools believe in consulting carefully with the consumer [...] the design field believes in ethnography, and this method flourished there well before its present popularity in business research circles.

For another thing, the design school believes in culture.

As it stands, the business school tends to think about the product or brand in terms of utilities, functions or benefits. Brands and products create value by doing work in the world.

From Grant McCracken via Richard Florida

How graphic design writing causes problems in student learning

Earlier I mentioned that there was a need for the design industry and press to ensure it reflects more closely the realities of how design is produced and consumed.
One example worth looking at is the book Dialogue: Relationships in Graphic Design by Shaun Cole. This book intrigues me because designer/client relationships is a particular research interest of mine. Unfortunately, none of the examples cited in the book matches up with my own experience of designer/client relationships, either as a designer myself, or as a researcher on the outside looking in.

That's because the book focuses exclusively on the 'prestigious' end of the market. All the clients and designers here are well known, or share certain cultural backgrounds, knowledge and tastes. It's an interesting book, and I heartily recommend it, but with the proviso that it is an accurate description of a tiny aspect of the graphic design profession and you don't have to move far outside that little world before you begin to encounter the sort of horror stories recounted on Graphic Design Rants.

But this is a massive problem in graphic design - just about all the writing on the subject focuses on a tiny proportion of the industry. I would wager it's not even a classic 80:20 split (where 80% of writing about graphic design focuses on 20% of the industry), more 99:1.
This is what I meant when I mentioned the focus on 'the visual' and 'heroes' in my last post - pick up any design history book and the link between it and the truth of how design is produced is infinitesimal - which is probably why there's little market for it among most designers themselves, never mind the general public (pace Rick Poynor). It isn't quite fiction, but it's not far off when compared with the experiences of 99% of designers and their clients.

Take a look at the index of Dialogue and you'll see what I mean; it's a roll call of the great and the good: Jonathan Ive, Ken Garland, Bjork, Madonna, Steven Spielberg, Dream Works, Saul Bass... not one mention of the everyday realities of getting graphic design produced - finance, trademarks and copyright, spreadsheets, negotiations, chasing clients for copy and images etc etc.
But it's books like this that students read, and that give them their impression of what working in graphic design is all about. If employers think graduates lack a sense of realism they blame people like me, the teachers. But I, like so many of my colleagues, am constantly placing design in to a real world context, but we're fighting against this tide of publications that 'big up' design and attempt to make it sound sexy and arty and heroic. And the biggest culprits in this mis-selling of the job of graphic design? Industry. It is seeking to reposition itself, to give itself a legitimacy (academia has a big role to play in this too - the elevation of design to academic status means it has needed to develop a sense of history and it has done this by borrowing it from the art world). This legitimacy comes from ignoring the dirty little secret, that graphic design exists at a basic, fundamental level in society and commerce and instead focussing on prestigious jobs and clients.

It's no wonder that potential clients for design are turned off by what they perceive as irrelevant (a major threat to the future of the industry), but equally it's no wonder that employers complain that graduates have no understanding of the context in which they will work. They've been lied to for years, reading articles in Creative Review and Grafik that try to hide that dirty little secret. Yet it's those self-same employers who encourage this, by trading in prestige and taking part in profiles and case studies that contribute to the idea among students that 'business skills', of the sort CSS says should be taught, are irrelevant

Funny, though, how it's teachers who get the blame.

Why design students reject lessons on legal and business issues

Creative and Cultural Skills (CCS) claim that UK design courses are not teaching the right things and cite copyright and trademark issues, and accountancy and design management as examples.
Now let's ignore the obvious problem with this - that you can't on the one hand claim a big threat to the UK design industry is 'amateur designers' and then claim we should be producing designers who are also 'amateur lawyers' and 'amateur accountants' - I would imagine our colleagues in those disciplines would think it odd that we try to teach their specialisms in a few weeks).

On one course I taught, all level 2 (one year before their final year) design students were given a talk by a representative of a government-funded agency established to help people in the creative industries with copyright and trademarks. They also received a series of talks from a similar agency on issues such as finance, pricing jobs and setting up in business. The response from students was that the talks were 'interesting but irrelevant'. (Personally I found them to be highly relevant, but then I've got nearly 20 years of experience).

Clearly CCS are wrong in this instance - students are being taught the things they say are important and by specialists from outside academia (CCS claim, among other things, that academics shouldn't be teaching but that specialists and practitioners should - I'll come back to that bizarre argument another time).

But the problem is not, as CCS claim, with the teaching, but with the learning - and this is one of the reasons CCS's claims about education need to be questioned, because they demonstrate a fundamental lack of pedagogical understanding. The question that needs to be asked is why do students perceive these topics to be irrelevant?

I propose two reasons: the first is pedagogical - if you do not assess something, then you can 'teach' it all you want but the likelihood it will be 'learnt' is low. And other than setting examinations to test theoretical knowledge of these areas, the opportunities to assess practical knowledge are few - the only real way is to experience them, something that could be done on work placements (but rarely is as hosts tend to put placement students to work on menial jobs rather than shadowing graduate-level areas) or in an actual job. (The role of employment in 'completing' an education is ignored by CCS who seem to believe that a graduate should be 'ready baked').

The second explanation is important. Initial research for my paper suggests that the graphic design industry rarely, if ever, discusses aspects such as copyright or trademarks in its communications. Indeed, a study of a sample of Design Week, Creative Review, Grafik and Eye found no mention at all of any of the issues CCS identifies as 'threats' to the future of the industry (e.g. accountancy skills, design management, law etc). (My focus in the paper is the graphics industry - whether it applies to other areas of design remains to be seen).

Without doubting CCS's assessment of the problems it is clear that their proposed solution - to teach them more - is unlikely to succeed if it cannot first persuade the design industry and the design publications industry to change its public focus from 'the visual' and 'the heroic' to the 'nitty gritty'. If students' perceptions of the design industry are changed at this level then the job of courses will be made much easier. When we try to teach students about the realities of the practice of design, they reject it as irrelevant because that's not what they're hearing from the industry and, after all as CCS say, what would academics know about 'the real world'?

At the moment, many courses do teach these aspects, but with little success - not necessarily because the teaching is poor but because students understandably believe them to be irrelevant. Those courses that do not teach these areas are arguably making a wise choice as there is little point expending valuable resources with nothing to show for it.

CCS, instead of blaming design courses for a lack of awareness of these issues among graduates, needs to pressure the industry and design journals to be more reflective of the realities of the business of design before it can make claims about, or force changes on academia.

Academic and Vocational Qualifications - what's the difference?

One of the big problems we face in design education is the still popular notion that degrees in design are 'vocational'. They aren't. A degree is, by definition, 'distinctively academic', no matter what subject it is in.
Unfortunately, this is generally forgotten or even unknown to a large number of employers, students and - worryingly - teachers.
In the UK we have what's called a 'qualification framework' which is overseen by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). This lays out a range of qualifications and levels defining (admittedly in quite woolly terms) the difference between what a student on the first year of a degree course should be expected to know compared with, say, a final year student, or an MA student. (The fact that a first year undergraduate should not be expected to have the same level of understanding of a topic as the post-grad teaching them is sadly forgotten by a significant number of teachers).

There are two basic types of qualification: a vocational one, and an academic one. Neither is better than the other, they are simply different, intended for different purposes. I can't do the system justice by boiling it down like this, but essentially a vocational qualification should be your choice if you want to do something without necessarily understanding the bigger picture, while an academic qualification takes in the bigger picture but may still enable you to practice - though the possibility of you practicing the subject is just that: a possibility, and not a given.

So if you want to be a lawyer, you would choose a BA in Law, but if you want to work in one area of law, or advise people, or run a law firm, a vocational qualification might be the ideal choice (vocational qualifications are - or should be - designed to be studied while the student is working if necessary).
Similarly if you wanted to be a researcher in art or design history, a BA in the subject is ideal. But if you want to run a museum then a vocational qualification in museology might be better.

What I don't think many people get is that you can have an academic qualification in a vocational subject, and a vocational qualification in an academic subject. And this failure to 'get' it is why we have degrees in some subjects when they should be vocational qualifications (in the UK the two main types of vocational qualifications are the Higher National Diploma - HND - and the Foundation Degree - FdA - which is largely replacing the former).
Design educators who claim a design degree is 'vocational' are missing the point. There has to be a difference between a BA and an FdA, and the difference is the type of things studied and the depth to which they are studied. A BA in graphic design is not simply a two year FdA with a dissertation on top and a bit more time to work on your portfolio, which is exactly what a lot of design degrees are.

To give an example, there are many many design students on BAs who would be much happier on FdAs - and many design teachers who would be happier teaching on them too. Equally there are many design students and teachers who would love to study and work on academic design courses but find themselves trapped in poorly disguised and mis-labelled vocational courses which aim only to turn out designers.

The problem is that the industry recruits graduates for ground-floor jobs, then complains that the graduates are not 'right' for the job. That's because the job isn't graduate level. But instead of doing what the FdA was designed to do - giving employers a say in the creation of qualifications that suit their needs, and enable them to recruit someone from school and send them on a part-time FdA while giving them real-world experience - they continue to recruit graduates and seek to influence what is taught and how it is taught. In effect, the design industry appears to be trying to turn degree courses in to FdAs and HNDs instead of simply sponsoring new vocational courses.

There is enormous value in studying design at degree level, but there are too many students who simply want to work as designers without understanding the bigger picture, (and, conversely, not enough people who see design as a legitimate area for academic study). That's not their fault - it's ours, and industry's (for insisting on degrees for jobs that don't need them). Worryingly, there are many design degrees which do not actually meet the criteria for a degree, simply being vocational training courses stretched needlessly over three or four years.

I don't agree with Creative and Cultural Skills that there are too many design students - the more people who study design the better design will be understood by clients and consumers (Margaret Thatcher knew that, which is why she insisted that craft and design be part of the national curriculum in schools).
But there are too many people on the wrong courses, and too many courses of the wrong type. What CCS should be doing, instead of criticising academics and trying to shut down courses and prevent people from studying design at degree level, is telling its constituency to stop recruiting graduates to non-graduate positions, to begin recruiting people at a younger age and sponsoring them through a vocational qualification (instead of criticising school curricula as well as university courses), and respect the value that design studied in an academic environment brings to the industry and the world in general.

Nailing the myth of graduate quality - with a bit of simple maths

A few weeks ago I attended the Competitiveness Summit 06, organised by the Design Council to mark the anniversary of the Cox Report. On the whole I enjoyed the day and got a great deal from it. Some things rankled with me, however, and I suspect I will write about them over the next few weeks.
In particular was the number of times the old myth about graduate quality was trotted out, especially by a representative of Seymour Powell, the product design firm. I have to say this chap managed to cram into five minutes some of the most insulting and patronising crap I have ever heard, and if what he said was any indicator of the response he and the company gives to applicants for jobs, I'm not surprised they're having difficulty recruiting! (But of course it is all 'our' fault - academics who apparently are out of touch with 'the real world' - unlike anyone sitting behind a Mac in a design studio, for example).

Anyway, back to this myth. It is claimed by many people, especially Creative and Cultural Skills that the quality of design graduates is decreasing - it isn't as good as it used to be in 'the good old days' basically. They offer no evidence for this, interestingly enough, and base the claim on two things: anecdotal evidence (of the type spouted by Seymour Powell), and the conclusion that as there are more design courses, students and graduates than ever before 'it stands to reason' that quality must be suffering.

I can offer my own anecdotal evidence to counter that: it isn't. Each year I am amazed to find the quality of graduates getting better, despite the fact that I tell myself it must be a statistical blip - surely this year can't be as good as last year? I haven't met one educator who agrees with the assessment that quality is suffering - only that the qualities themselves are changing, and this is one of the central arguments in my forthcoming paper.

But I wonder why companies like Seymour Powell believe that quality is getting worse. The conclusion I've come to is actually quite staggering, and I want to save it for January (sorry about that), but for now let me share with you a really simple 'proof' that the myth of graduate quality being linked to increased student numbers is wrong.

Remember that the claim is 'the number of quality design graduates has decreased sharply in recent years' and that the co-relation to this is the equally sharp increase in the number of students. (If you study statistics you'll know instantly what the problem is with this hypothesis).

Let's assume, for the sake of ease, that twenty years ago there were 1,000 design graduates each year (the actual discipline is irrelevant). Let us also assume that of those 1,000 graduates 250 were what might be described as 'high quality'.
Now come to the present day and say that the number of graduates per year has increased tenfold to 10,000.
If the proportion of 'high quality' graduates were to drop equally dramatically, from 25% to only 2.5% there would still be 250 high quality graduates. In other words, even if critics are correct and the proportions are suffering, the actual number of high quality graduates in a worst case scenario remain exactly the same. Given that this is a worst case scenario, the actual truth must be that rather than the number of high quality graduates diminishing, as claimed so loudly (and believed by many), the number has increased.

This certainly ties in with the anecdotal evidence from within higher education and, believe me, academics are not known for their Pollyanna attitudes - I have worked with some real sceptics in my time and even the worst grudgingly admit that standards are at least as good as they ever were and by most accounts so much better.

The claim by certain sectors of the design industry that the number of quality graduates is diminishing is, to use some frank and un-academic language, bullshit.
What my research is suggesting is that what these people are seeing is a change in the number of traditional graduates applying to them - they wrongly jump to the conclusion that this is a sign of bad teaching and over-supply of graduates. It isn't. What it is, I'm afraid you'll have to wait until mid-January to find out...

Why the Chartered Society of Designers does not get design

I've been busy researching the relationship between the graphic design industry and academia recently for a paper I'll be giving in London on Jan 5th. This has invovled analysing the role of 'Creative and Cultural Skills', an organisation that claims to represent employers and makes several broad claims, which basically boil down to the 'fact' that university courses in design are no good and that industry knows better. (It's a little more complicated than that and I'll post more about it after the conference).

One of CCSKill's partners in their campaing is the UK Chartered Society of Designers, an organisation that has been around for quite some time but until recently has not had much of a profile in the design industry. This is changing, largely because of the CCSkills campaign to replace academic skills in the industry with 'practical' skills.

One policy of CSkills and the CSD is to create a licensing scheme for practising designers. I have a real problem with that: licensing practitioners is protectionism (funny how when other people do that we cry foul, but see no problem in doing it ourselves).

The aim of CSD is to remove unlicensed designers from the market because a) they are taking business from 'professionals' and b) they produce bad design that serves clients poorly.
These are strange assumptions that are not borne out by reality - a simple check would be to see if CSD members only ever produce 'good' design and never have disgruntled clients. I imagine 'no' would be the answer to both those points.

But why would anyone want to be a member of the chartered society of designers? And why would anyone use such a person?
One of the arguments commonly heard in favour iof licensing designers is that similar schemes have worked in other areas, with architecture and gas fitting being commonly cited. Membership of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is seen as a badge of quality, and it is difficult to practice as an archtitect in Britain without membership.
Membership of Corgi is a legal requirement for anyone fitting gas appliances such as boilers and fires. Rather than it being a badge of quality, it is a badge of competence - to gain membership you have to pass an exam and demonstrate that you understand basic concepts and theories regarding, among other things, carbon monoxide poisoning. It is illegal to fit a gas appliance without Corgi registration, but such registration does not mean that a member will not make a mistake, or do a bad job in future.

Now it makes sense for someone who is having a wall knocked through to check the qualifications of the person doing the job - after all, a bad job could be fatal. Similarly, it makes sense to check that someone fitting a new boiler knows what they are doing for the same reasons - a bad job could kill someone.
You would have to have a massively enlarged sense of the importance of graphic design if you believed you had to use a member of the CSD to have your new restaurant menus produced, or your new business card and letterhead. Or your small ad for the local paper.
No one, as far as I know, ever died because a menu was badly designed. There is no comparison between graphic design on the one hand and archtecture and gas fitting on the other.

There is no doubt that some clients would seek out a CSD member to do their design for them, but for every one who does I imagine there would be another ten who either wouldn't care (or even know) about CSD membership, and several more who would actively reject the notion of employing such a person because they would assume they were too expensive.
CSD membership has many benefits but the most important one is a sense of belonging - because membership is based on peer approval it must feel good to get in, and the prestige or social capital it brings is what you exchange the membership fee for. What it is not is a guarantee of future income, nor is it a guarantee to the client of a good job and good design.
You have to invest a lot of time and effort in gaining CSD membership and maintaining it - this is time and effort (and therefore money) that a lot of designers cannot afford and that a lot of designers simply do not need to expend, because they are managing quite well without being a member.

It all comes back to the idea that the CSD is essentially a club for graphic designers, nothing more. As such I have no problem with it. I have occasionally pondered joining but I'm not sure what I would gain from it, or even that I would be accepted (are my clients prestigious enough?).
But the notion that the CSD wants to grow into a licensing body so that the message going out in future is that only members should be approached for design work in future is a dangerous development. It is, to repeat what I said earlier, protectionism - an attempt to counter competition from a perceived threat of amateur and untrained designers and to improve the quality of design, as determined by the design elite.

The licensing will extend to education too, with the CSD having a role in approving courses in the same way that RIBA does and, by implication, closing down those that do not adhere to its policies and curriculum, or worse limiting the number of courses on a supply and demand basis - if the CSD doesn't need any more members then presumably they will not license more than a handful of design courses. This is wrong and worrying on so many levels.

My prediction is that colleges and universities will split - some will seek out membership as a marker of prestige but then be shocked when the local FE college also gains membership (as it will, largely because FE colleges are traditionally more willing to change curricula to suit local employers' needs). This will then result in universities deliberatly not seeking membership and moving to distance themselves from the CSD, perhaps even forming their own organisation in direct competition.
When I suggested this, one senior member of the CSD said this was fine 'it's a free market'. Which sort of begs the question, why seek to ensure that the market to buy and practice design is anything but free?

(Incidentally, it's worth noting that there are major ructions going on between some architecture courses and RIBA over their approach, and similar things are happening in the world of psychology where courses are rebelling against the British Pyschology Society).

Let's go back to that assumption that untrained designers are bad designers and need to be stopped. It is more a case that the design industry simply does not get design - people go to 'amateur' designers because they want a cheap, quick job without any pretentions or angst over typeface choices. They also go to such designers because they are happy with what they get. Are we seriously saying that a local cafe needs to go to a design studio licensed by CSD to get its Christmas menu designed? Is the local hardware store owner really going to be forced to go to a CSD-licensed agency to get its three-page web site done?

Design is subject to the free market in so many ways, and any attempt to restrict the market, to protect 'good' designers from amateurs through a licensing scheme somewhat misses the point. Before it can hope to license designers and courses, those in charge of the Chartered Society of Designers need to do a little re-education of their own and try to get a better understanding of how design is really produced and consumed.