GSA, Heads of Departments Conference

What is the design context?

While creativity has been around since the beginning of civilisation, ‘design’, as we know it, only appeared in the 1830s. ‘Design’ was created by industry in order to meet the needs of industry. The oldest schools of design in the world are here in the UK. The Glasgow School of Art is the second oldest school, founded in 1844, seven years after The Royal College of Art in London.

Design, just like Art or Architecture, means many things to many people, me included. The core definition of design that has underpinned my practice for the past fifteen years remains a broad and inclusive one and has more to do with ‘creativity’ that with ‘design,’ spelt with a capital ‘D’. For me ‘design’ is just another name for the ‘creative process’: an inductive, cyclical and well-documented method of analysing, understanding and manipulating any particular set of circumstances. The information gained as a result of this process is then configured in many ways to produce any number of things: products, buildings or books, but it’s equally likely to result in some form personal expression or in a strategic report.

I believe that the divisions between Art, Architecture and Design are devised to create often useful administration zones, focussed around increasingly complex technical specialisms. But the different disciplines have more in common than they’d often like to admit because all humans are predisposed to be creative, but specialist education makes us more productively creative: more human if you like.

I prefer not to label what I do but, if forced, I refer to myself as a ‘Designer’. My reluctance to name myself isn’t because I’m ashamed of being called a ‘designer’ but because it now only describes a part of what I do. Five years ago I was unambiguously a designer. Today there is no name for what I do, or for the activities of many others like me.

It’s worth looking at the context of Design’s distinguished if rather short history. It describes the progress of the last 170 years and encompasses the mechanisation of craft traditions, the Modernisation of the West, the growth of the motorcar and proliferation electrical appliances, television, radio, sanitary and social housing, branding, advertising and global communications. Design, like almost everything else in the world, struggles to keep pace with the rate of progress.

But the most cataclysmic changes in the design landscape have occurred in the last ten years and they show all the signs of accelerating ever faster into the future. The current digital revolution came upon us so quickly that many of the design professions were forced to change overnight or die.

Having spent the last fifteen years running a ‘design consultancy’ with my architect partner Ross Hunter. I’m now told that I actually run a ‘creative industry’. It’s funny but I had the feeling that something was up when phototypesetting disappeared. Overnight the graphics studio changed shape, out went typesetting rules, cow gum and line board, putty rubbers, registration marks, mark-ups and mark-up pens, overlays, Rubalith, Schafelines, halftone line and dot screens.

In the interior design part of our company the architects and designers lost all but one of their drawing boards, complete with their parallel motions. They also lost Rotring technical pens and endless bottles of black ink. French curves and adjustable set-squares were next to go. Applemacs began to appear in our studio, so, we dismantled the process camera. It had been an integral part of graphic production and had originally been craned into position. But we took it apart bit by bit and threw it in a skip – one day it had been worth fifteen thousand pounds, but six months and one Applemac later, it was worth nothing – we couldn’t even give it away. Today the studio looks less cluttered. I use electronic mail, a mobile phone and a laptop that conspire to make me work in corners of my life I never knew existed. But some important things remain – like my sketch books.

In reply to Seona’s question, ‘What is the design context?’ The only context I can vouch for with any certainty is that of continual and accelerating change. Change is the only context that is real and meaningful. No one knows what Design will mean tomorrow, least of all me.

Not only do I find myself working in strange ways and odd times but I find myself working with strangers: now I’m just as likely to work with and employ graduates from the arts, humanities and business schools as I am to employ graduates from design or the fine arts. I’m also much more likely to employ people with specific skills on a job by job basis or to forge informal partnerships with people and organisations that complement my own. I form companies and joint ventures to do specific projects but keep my core business small, light and flexible – because I don’t know what I’ll be doing tomorrow.

So, ‘What do I want from graduates?’

Change can bring with it a feeling of insecurity. In my experience the happiest and most useful graduates are sociable, mature and broadly interested in many things – ‘many things’ can include football, beer, music, skateboarding or fishing – I don’t care, but preferably not golf. In my business you never can tell when apparently useless knowledge, such as how to use a skateboard, suddenly becomes the precondition for doing business.

Graduates must also be flexible because the chances are that they’ll work in many fields other than those that they specialised in. As creative people from many different disciplines work across common software platforms it’s increasingly necessary for graduates to work across traditional disciplines so an appreciation of how others work is practically useful. I especially enjoy working with people who have energy and the confidence to challenge each other, and their clients and superiors, and generally keep life interesting for all of us.

However, I do find that graduates who have real competence in at least one technical skill are more secure and sure of themselves, and it doesn’t really matter what that skill is. Being really good at something, knowing something really well, makes you value the complexity of all that you don’t know. This encourages humility which is, I think, a good thing.

When I talk about technical skills I’m talking about more than software training. Software provides ‘tools’ for creative people but it’s no substitute for learning core skills such as reading, writing, drawing, knowing, understanding that mean we’re in control of our creativity rather than just playing with it. Vocational training is not education and the business of design demands confident, intelligent educated graduates with well-founded, strong opinions and a structured process that underpins their work. The speed of change makes it almost impossible for educators to predict what the world will require of their students so I believe that it’s useful to provide a broad education coupled with specific specialist areas of study – this should sound familiar and it seems to work well.

In my creative industry we continue to use the core skills we were given in art school in new ways. We’ve kept our expertise in particular areas, such as in drawing and in setting type correctly – for the benefit of those clients who appreciate a well-turned line and are willing to pay for our skill and experience.

Text-based knowledge remains, for the time being, the core of our communications system both in the real world and on-line, and English the international language of choice. This worries me because many graduates don’t know how to spell, how to write in sentences and how to set type so that actually communicates. I believe the ability to communicate in spoken and written language is ever more valuable. I continue to exploit my graphic heritage through writing, and publishing, broadcasting and developing critical debate about creativity and how it affects me, because I can and because my education helps me flourish in a changing world. Which is just as well, because the only thing I am sure about is that I won’t be working in the same way for very much longer.

My only certainty is that there is no certainty, which, from a creative point of view, is very exciting. I feel lucky that through my art school education I learned to welcome change, and I feel fortunate that I was given the tools with which to identify reassuring patterns or opportunities, in the apparent chaos that greets me every morning.

In reply to Seona’s question, ‘Does education keep pace with change?’ I would have to say that education has never kept pace with change.

The time that elapsed from the emergence of the first industrial revolution in 1760, to the foundation of the first school of industrial creativity was 77 grimy years.

By the time education had almost caught up with the pace of industrial progress, and its resulting social change, a second wave of industrial revolution was already upon us, it lasted from 1890 to around 1930. By now the RCA and Glasgow School of Art were fully formed, internationally respected institutions well able to work alongside scientific universities and new technical colleges. The results were literally, electrifying.

But this second industrial revolution was very different from the one that preceded it. For instead of being at the mercy of change, an educational framework was already established which enabled strategists to identify, understand and even shape, predict and control the outcome of change. Education had become an integral part of the process of change, maximising its potential. This time round schoolchildren and graduates were equipped with the skills they needed to enter industry and win jobs. Young people were educated to become employees.

Today we’re living through a third industrial revolution that has come to pass more quickly than all but the science fiction writers could have predicted. But this new wave of change is intrinsically different from anything that’s gone before. The previous industrial upheavals expanded through the creation of physical capital: mechanical machines, vast rail, power and manufacturing networks. This third industrial revolution gathers speed in a completely new way: through the creation of invisible, virtual, communications networks and a myriad ever-changing, highly adaptable and creative micro-business made possible by the unprecedented power of digital technologies and microprocessors.

Now creative people have their own powerful and inexpensive machines: their own means of design, production, distribution and promotion through their personal computers. They take what education they can and tailor it to fit, or go on-line or extracurricular to beg, steal and borrow what they need to get by. Therefore, educating students to expect to become employees is no longer a viable option.

Not only has education never kept pace with change it never will unless it stops merely reacting to the needs of industry and starts to proactively and flexibly help individuals and industries capitalise on the creative opportunities created by new technologies.

I believe that the broad education provided by art schools has once again come of age. As well as providing really useful graduates who can go on to become employees or employers. Art schools have an opportunity to return to their roots and work with industry in order to help predict the future. Art schools can help guide industry through change by showing business how to welcome the benefits it brings rather than run scared. Change terrifies businesses but it’s the lifeblood of creativity, innovation and the art school system.

So in reply to Seona’s question, ‘Should the context inform how the school develops?’ I have to say that the context of constant change gives art schools the opportunity, through research, to help industry innovate. Art schools should be in the driving seat of change, not locked in the luggage compartment.

So, where is education succeeding?

There’s a lot about education that’s right but there’s still a lot that’s wrong and the biggest problem education has is in making government understand the rate at which industry is changing. History and common sense tell us that industry must be prepared if it is to responsibly exploit the potential wealth brought about by this latest industrial revolution. And preparation means education.

While Britain may have written the textbook on design education, and be home to some of the finest design talent in the world, it’s our lucky history rather than our scrupulous planning that now place us in our excellent position. And we’re going to have to do an awful lot more, an awful lot more quickly if British Business is to inherit the share of the creative action that it so richly deserves.

The UK is widely acknowledged as the world’s creative capital, on par with the United States (but don’t take my work for it, read the Government’s and Design Council’s published research). However, I believe we’re living on a creative legacy that desperately needs replenishing because it’s in danger of becoming depleted.

Our school curriculum has barely changed since the last industrial revolution. School-leavers still expect to be employees rather than employers. Art, design and technical drawing are still what you do if you can’t do anything else. Creativity remains an option rather than a national obligation.

We must educate businesses to work in partnership with designers and continue to educate designers to think of their work in business terms. Design is a great medium for transferring technology between products and services.

If Business is to grow through creativity then we must educate more designers to ever-higher levels of competence. Business can help designers to discover new ways of validating their work. Because if the risk associated with intuition can’t be predicted, Business will suffer.

Design continues to add quantifiable value to Business through the creation of intellectual capital: the products and brands that are expressed as tangible assets on the balance sheet. Customers understand and expect to pay for design and the added value of having their personalities and values reflected in the products and services they choose to buy.

In the future a product, a process, a service or a building will not be defined only by its apparent form or performance but by its latent market potential. The potential size of a market will be huge, with a similar associated risk: the cost of opportunity will therefore be vast and the rewards for success bigger still. With the support of business, designers will predict and control the necessary risk associated with all innovation.

We now talk about design within the context of the ‘creative industries’, but creativity is much more than just another industry, it’s an integral part of almost every successful industry.

170 years ago art schools were created to work with Industry. Today industry and creativity need each other as never before. We should build on our long relationship and get creativity further into industry, get industrial investment in creativity and creative education, because in tomorrow’s world creativity will be our greatest natural resource, our primary industry and our richest national asset. Tomorrow must be a bright place for art schools, if it’s not business and society will suffer.