I’m not going to start this article by suggesting that this is a balanced and unbiased discussion, because it’s not.
It’s essentially a bit of a rant from yours truly about some of the things that get on my wick when it comes to the ‘design industry’. I guess you could argue it’s more pointedly aimed at the agency/consultancy world as this is something I have more direct experience of, but I’m sure that much of it can be transposed as you see fit.
I’ve written articles in the past that are aimed at Undergraduates and Graduates, so I thought I’d do something similar here. To the Design Industry.
Most of what I’m taking aim at is stuff that may not bother you in the slightest. You may think I’m dribbling on like a ‘grumpy old man’, and you are entitled to think that. I won’t argue either, as some of it is absolutely a by-product of an overt weariness with stuff that has been scratching away at me for years. Stuff I’ve noticed and become bored of hearing again and again.
Ultimately it all boils down to a desire for the industry I inhabit (or at least swim on the murky periphery of) to be a bit more direct and honest about what it does and how it operates. Less of the inflated bravado and bluster-guff and more approachability and openness please.
Anyway – *cracks knuckles* – here we go…
1. You are not fearless or intrepid.
How many times have you seen the opening gambit of an agency website and read words like ‘fearless’ or ‘intrepid’? In order to set themselves apart from the countless others using phrases like ‘innovation sprint’ and ‘design doing’, we seem to have lost our sense of reality and perspective. Fearless is what firefighters are. Fearless is not designing a slightly curvier version of a bloody shampoo bottle or deciding to remove the serifs from the client’s 20 year old logotype.
Intrepid is a Nepalese mountain guide…not some creative poppycock relating to the way you introduce your creds. Maybe it’s my aversion to the superlative ‘super’ being thrown in front of every adjective. I’m super-excited. I’m super-happy. We are super-stoked. *gag*
This form of overinflated descriptor tennis makes my skin crawl. It reminds me of Hollywood fakery and feels like a complete disregard for honesty. If your everyday work is ‘fearless’ then how do you describe your top notch work? God-like? Tsunamic (I just made that up but it works for the purposes of illustration!).
The design industry already struggles with the curse of false-promise. It’s hard enough trying to convince bean counters and suits of the ‘value’ of creativity and the genuine benefits of believing in the design process, let alone throwing them words you can’t possibly live up to.
“So…on a scale of 1 to 10, how fearless – exactly – are you?”
2. Staged ‘design’ sessions.
I tend to share every job posting I see on LinkedIn, mainly to allow people who have fewer connections (like undergrads and recent grads who have not had the chance to grow their network) to see these opportunities, and every time I see the ‘staged’ design shot I have a little chuckle. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s so far from the truth as to be ridiculous.
You know the shot I’m talking about. They typically come in any one of a few different forms and clichés…
The aerial ‘over table’ shot with scattered marker pens, fanned out Pantone swatch books and the all important vernier calipers being ‘thumbed’, all surrounding a scattering of fully prepared and massively ‘over-pimped’ visuals that have been printed rather than drawn. You see the concerned looks, hunched shoulders and quizzical hands of at least 4 or 5 black t-shirt wearing millennials, with at least 2 of them sporting a trimmed beard and some thick rimmed spectacles. Someone is pointing.
Then there’s the ‘behind the shoulders’ shot of multiple happy colleagues actively discussing a rammed pin board of excellent (over produced) sketches, Post-it notes and some form of timeline chart. Words like ‘future living’ or ‘active elders’ jump out from clustered (but incredibly well ordered and arranged) ‘themes’. Ditto to the beards, glasses and yes…you guessed it…pointing. There’s also someone laughing.
Or the ‘look how well we all get along’ shot. Usually in a studio cafe, stepped meeting area, glass walled meeting room or other suitably contrived and predictably ‘designed’ space. Someone is holding court. Everyone else absolutely loves what they are saying and are agreeing furiously. There are Apple laptops everywhere, hipster coffee being lovingly consumed, some nonsensical positive phrase or mantra lurking in the background and some evidence of somebody’s commute to work on a bike.
Now I’m as guilty as the next person of having staged these shots in years gone by. They are always meant to push a sense of collaboration, relaxed style, friendly discussion and overt creativity, but it’s such a far cry from the reality of modern design practice. For sure, there are times when you discuss things over a table and point at things on a pin board or have a creative discussion in a cafe but most of the time you are simply sat in front of a computer screen or in a dry meeting. I fully appreciate that this isn’t as sexy and alluring as design agencies would have you believe, but I’d love it if one of the job postings I shared was genuinely honest (in their visual) about what it’s like to work in a design agency.
3. Stop banging on about culture.
Culture is important. Don’t get me wrong. It’s what makes you get up on a Monday morning (amongst other things for sure) and when all is said and done, if the business you are in doesn’t have a positive, friendly and forward tilting vibe about it, it can grind you down.
But my issue is not with the need for culture, but with the overt need to promote or contrive culture. The incessant need to tell everyone quite how brilliant a culture we all have here at and how much of a fool you would be not to give your right arm to work with us. Look at all the perks and benefits you get by just being in our very presence? Amazing right?
It smacks of a headteacher jumping onto the dance floor at a school disco and telling everyone how much of a good time we are all having! *cringe*
The number of announcements I’ve read in the last year or so from businesses saying that they’ve given their staff a day off a month to ‘visit a museum’ or ‘watch some inspiring TED talks’ or ‘go volunteering’. I have absolutely no problem with any of the examples given (and quite fancy doing all of them), but maybe let your staff do what they want to do, to suit their particular mental and physical wellness needs, and just give them the time off to choose. Please stop banging on about how bloody gracious you are and just trust your people to do what is best for themselves and the people they wish to surround themselves with. If I want to watch a TED talk, I will do. If you want to be serious about giving people more time off and trusting your workforce, go to a 4 day week.
From my experience, culture is something that is created by a combination of tangible and intangible things. Being given freedom by those in charge to make changes to suit how you work and general positive example setting are great starting points, but ultimately the culture is a recipe created by all involved…not just the top dogs and cats who ‘decide’ what they want the culture to be. It’s like telling me to have fun.
Piss off.
4. Cell division title-ology.
I touched on this in a recent LinkedIn post and it gained a fair bit of traction. That specific post challenged the shift in expectations and usage of the term ‘Product Design’ from one traditionally focussed on physical product design to one now entirely related to digital platforms and experiences. I don’t plan to reopen this wound here, but my wider observation is that the industry is cell dividing at a rate of knots, with the resultant wake of confusion making it almost impossible for many creative job hunters knowing exactly what it is they are either good at or looking for.
In fact, I would estimate that of all the conversations I have with ambitious undergraduates and recent graduates, approximately a third relate to the uncertainties around hunting down a job in ID (Industrial Design) or UX (User Experience)…mainly due to the lack of opportunities in the former and the plethora or roles bandying the term ‘UX’ in the well paid job description.
Even as someone within the industry, I get confused with the various letters used. X is ‘Experience’ in some situations but ‘Extended’ in others. I is ‘Insight’ in some roles and ‘Interface’ in others. You can now get a job in UX, UI, CI, UXR, XR, CX, IxD, AR and every version therein.
Then there’s the sub-division broadly within the ‘Industrial Design’ world. You can be an Innovation Consultant, a Design Researcher, a Strategist, a CMF specialist, a Human Factors Engineer, a Surface Modeller, a Design Engineer (although this title is morphing like lightning too), a Concept Designer, a CAD Technician and any one of a multitude of others than fall between any number of discipline cracks. I have no doubt I’ve missed at least the same number again from this list alone.
And that doesn’t even start to touch on NFT’s, VR ‘Sculptors’ and the multitude of new jobs popping up out of technology platforms, digital tools and the emergence of what we are led to believe is a parallel future world to our own. I know plenty of people who are making significant strides in roles we hardly have terms for!
I can understand the need to be specific in looking for skills, particularly when roles are quite niche and outputs specific, but my concern stems from the misuse and contradiction that naturally comes from such cell division. My LinkedIn feed is filled with as many posts looking for ‘Product Designers’ that require physical, 3D, manufacturing skills as there are posts looking for ‘Product Designers’ who will work entirely on digital Apps and e-commerce systems. It’s hard enough finding decent, tenacious talent when the targets are clear and straightforward. I fear that we are making our lives much harder and our discipline less agreeable by confusing the hell out of the people we are trying to attract.
By all means use the job titles you wish, but be clear about what you are expecting of the candidates and what they will be working on. Remember that most rarely use more than a Google search string to find stuff, so make it work!
5. No more ‘revolutions’ please.
You can probably tell by now that I don’t hold much stock in bluster.
And something that really makes me giggle is when agency websites or creds state that they are ‘different’. Straplines that use words like ‘redefining’, or ‘a new agency model’ or ‘world leading’.
I hate to break it to you. You are not.
It’s just hot air rooted in more hot air.
I’m not suggesting that you are anything less than incredibly capable, creative folk doing the best for your clients. But you are not different. Not really. I guarantee that there will be hundreds of other businesses doing something almost identical to what you do. Unless you are Usain Bolt or Elon Musk, you are not ‘world leading’. A few notable design awards does not make you king of the jungle, merely inhabitants of a reputable population. No matter how you spin your design process or use of ‘cutting edge’ tools to deliver ‘meaningful experiences’, there will be countless others spinning the same jargon from equally passionate mouths, and most likely closer than you may feel happy about.
I am fully aware that there are many, many other designers who can do what I do and deliver what I deliver to my clients…and probably cheaper, to a higher standard and with greater consistency of creativity. I’m not suggesting that I’m ‘a new approach to innovation’ or ‘breaking the agency mould’. I’m just me. Offering my ears and my brain to people who think it might be useful.
To my mind, the more you say you are different, the less likely you are to be genuinely different.
As Queen Gertrude utters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet… “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
6. Less twaddle.
I’m not sure if my radar is tuned in to hearing more twaddle than normal, but recently it seems the ‘twaddle-o-meter’ has been going batshit crazy.
By ‘twaddle’ I refer to the gushy gushy bullshit that some agencies and designers use to describe their work. The way we might accuse an over eager wine connoisseur of using ten times more adjectives than is healthy to describe a mouthful of red wine. The ‘why use 5 words when 50 will do’ approach to extolling their virtues.
And it’s incredibly prevalent in the world of industrial design, where people often use such twaddle to describe a new product launch. It’s not an ‘office chair’, it’s a ‘juxtaposition of work and play’. It’s not a ‘lamp’, it’s a ‘freespirited exploration of the tension between light and dark, a bewilderment of emotions twisting their exotic tendrils around your soul’.
Or something like that.
I can’t quite work out why we feel the need to go to such lengths to over complicate the message. It’s tricky enough to communicate the effectiveness and everyday relevance of design to the masses, so why distance ourselves ever further by resorting to mindless, superfluous bluster?
It’s like someone down the line listened to a pompous architect describing their recent build, reminiscing about the ‘use of space’ and ‘the integration with nature’ and fancied doing it for the toaster they’d just designed.
Design at its core is about creating solutions that people just use and take pleasure in using. Simply. Effectively, Delightfully. Why complicate it with unnecessary twaddle?
Unless of course, once you remove the twaddle and describe it for what it is, very little remains!
7. Stop asking for superstars and ninjas.
I wrote a a bit about this subject here, but I thought I’d reinforce it again.
Superlatives like ‘superstar’ favour the bold or the egotistical. Few people would describe themselves as a ‘ninja’ or a ‘thrill seeker’ when it comes to getting a job in design – particularly young graduates or undergraduates, who are fragile enough as it is, particularly after having survived education under COVID restrictions!
The last two years have taken an enormous toll on people’s self confidence, levels of anxiety and self awareness, so suggesting that you are only going to consider people who have ‘special abilities’ or ‘live, breath and sleep design’ is going to attract those that won’t fit (and probably massively over index in self confidence) and will deter those who may have something genuinely special to offer. Just be honest. Ask for what you want and write it in a way that relates. It’s not hard.
It’s also unlikely you are going to pay them superstar wages.
8. Be honest about your contribution.
This is part ‘twaddle’ and part ‘no more revolutions please’ (see relevant sections).
The bombastic statements prefacing every case study, opening page of a website or ‘relationship’ that a studio or agency claims to have ‘delivered’. In truth, I’ve been far too guilty of this myself as I think it’s a form of industry conditioning in a way. The over-reaching claims made by businesses of their contributions to the clients’ results. We – as sellers of creative services – have to sound impressive to our prospective audience, be they future clients or potential future employees. It’s the agency version of the playground “my brother can beat up your brother any day!” poppycock.
Things like “We were an instrumental and trusted strategic partner in the double digit growth of X”. Roughly translated, in means we redesigned the plastic packaging for a new formulation and bath fragrance that – with millions of dollars of marketing spend – outperformed the old, slightly different version over a period of a few years.
Don’t get me wrong. There will be genuine step-change solutions created by insightful, brilliant designers working with empathetic, trusting clients. These will change the market landscape. But these are fewer and further apart than we would be led to believe.
I challenge you to read most creative service agency websites and not get a few coloured spots on your ‘Bullshit Bingo’ scorecards after a few minutes of fervent scrolling. Unfortunately, it just makes the genuinely good stuff get lost in the crowds of guff. To quote a certain orange ex-president…it’s all a bit ‘fake news’.
This also extends to lots of quotes on agency websites about sustainability, ethics, doing ‘good’, shining principles and truth. Most of it is pigswill and hogwash. Words to pacify and entice. To align with the zeitgeist. I’d say it’s not worth the paper it’s written on, but it isn’t even that!
To those doing good work, genuinely striving for sustainable solutions and standing up to the principles stated in their ‘manifesto’, I applaud you. I really do….because it’s hard. Bloody hard. Most of the time you are looking to find projects to keep the cash monster happy and to keep your business afloat.
And that monster doesn’t always have such robust principles.
9. Faded funnels.
Not sure about you, but I’ve kinda had enough of the myriad design process or design thinking ‘diagrams’ that are bandied around. From funnels to diamonds, to double diamonds to helixes and all manner of infographical jiggery pokery in between, there’s only so much analysis I can take.
In truth, it often gets to a point where as a practitioner of the service, I often get confused by the diagram claiming to support my own rationale. I think, in our efforts to communicate ‘how’ we think as designers to people who only understand numbers or words, we’ve somehow diluted the magic into something rather sterile, and sometimes downright counter productive.
I think I’ll just leave that there.
10. Bottom up support.
Much of what I have talked about is fairly inconsequential and meant to be taken somewhat tongue in cheek. However, there is something that I feel is becoming increasingly lacking in our industry, despite chest beating and spin to the contrary. Something I have had quite a bit of experience with recently.
Support of burgeoning talent. Youthful, exuberant, naive, unadulterated talent.
There’s been some chatter recently of the need to pledge a ‘living wage’ for interns. Whilst I agree with the sentiment, it’s relatively futile as it is essentially no more than a tribal drum. Those people who agree with the initiative will of course gleefully and overtly support it. Those that are duplicitous and are guilty of internship exploitation are simply going stay quiet and carry on. It’s a bit like asking someone if they are racist. You will always get a rebuttal. No-one is going to either admit or think that they are….despite evidence to the contrary.
But the intern debate links to a wider issue. One of general support and encouragement of those blinking in the headlights of recent graduation or early stage career growth…or even those students still at school looking for direction when it is most needed. As someone who has looked to my wider network to help or employ young talent, I have been disappointed by how few reach out.
To those that do, I am eternally grateful (you know who you are!) and your time and advice is appreciated, but I would estimate that of my network, less than 1% have done anything to offer any kind of peripheral support, let alone direct and active support to young people looking for direction and advice. For this I can count people who have made significant effort in the mere handfuls.
It just strikes me as simultaneously incredibly short-sighted and short-memoried (I know that’s not a real word). Each and every one of us has at some stage been in a position where we needed the support of people more experienced than us to help us up the ladder, and I guarantee that once you get past a certain age, those same young ‘punks’ will be your clients, or bosses or gatekeepers to funds or decisions you need to stay afloat. But many of us seem to forget this very quickly. Maybe it’s fear of being replaced. Maybe it’s career blinkers. Maybe it’s the fact that we are all just too darned busy with work to focus on that stuff?
Whatever the reason, not supporting new talent into the industry is akin to sawing off the branch you are sitting on.
11. Concept misdirection.
Conceptual thinking is critical to design. It is a vehicle to provoke and prompt discussion. An opportunity to throw the cat amongst the pigeons and see what happens.
Concepts are integral to every design studio and typically this thinking is limited to fee paying clients and their ensuing NDA’s and contractual payment clauses. It leads to fierce client discussion and hopefully pops out the other end of the development tunnel as something well considered and helpful to society (or at least appealing, relevant and profitable).
But every now and again, agencies will decide to do their own concept work and publish it to the wider world or to their client network, in an attempt to secure more creative work or convince new clients of their creative prowess and thoughtful approach. Until recently, it was always understood that the idea put forward was a concept. An idea manifested in some form to prod, interrupt and challenge.
However, whether it’s a by-product of the need for Instagram design porn and an incessant desire for new content, the line between these concepts and ‘real’ solutions has blurred significantly. I’ve noticed more and more ‘design concepts’ being launched on design platforms and it takes quite the detective spirit to establish whether the work is conceptual or not.
This has a few consequences if the distinction is not made clear. Firstly it can erode our reputation as an industry for seeming to create impossible solutions not rooted in keen realism. Secondly, it can artificially elevate the originators of the concept to levels beyond which they are capable of substantiating.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not denigrating the idea of futuristic and provocative concept thinking as it’s healthy and keeps us all on our metaphorical toes, but passing this work off as ‘real’ is dangerous.
Apologies…this was a monster. If you’ve made it through, then bravo.
You will see that much of it is written with ‘tongue in cheek’ love to the industry and yet there is genuine frustration behind many of the points I’ve raised. I don’t expect anything to change and this post was more about catharsis than political showboating. In fact, it’s taken me months to get it written…not because I can’t think of anything to write, but because it’s not particularly useful to anyone.
Just a good old fashioned rant. From a middle aged, slightly grumpy Dad.
Take it or leave it. Over and out.
