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Design Future

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 The Design Council recently brought together a group of twenty senior people from industry and education to discuss how we might improve the best of our design education.

We're quite aware that we're doing a lot of things correctly. After the United States, we have the greatest design industry in Europe and the second largest in the world. 

According to the most recent government statistics, from 2008 to 2013, the sector increased at a rate of 10.8% per year, compared to 4.2 percent for the rest of the economy.


Design Future
Design Future


Our design education is world-renowned, but we must continue to invest in our design talents in order to maintain and grow this competitive edge and maintain a robust pipeline.

As a result, we posed the following question: • What talents would the designer of the future require? How can industry and education collaborate to keep us ahead of the curve?

The following are the seven main things that came up throughout our discussion:


1. Creating a mentality

In addition to technical talents and the fundamental "craftship" that drives design practice, the industry seeks individuals with a strong point of view and the capacity to defend their views. They want people to "row the boat and rock the boat."


Similarly, 91 percent of the design sector is made up of enterprises employing four or fewer employees. As a result, a large number of design graduates will be founding their own start-ups; they will require resilience to succeed and disrupt the status quo. Many of the institutions involved at the meeting completely supported this and saw it as important to their mission.

2. Combinations of abilities

While the industry seeks graduates with a skill set that combines people-centered design, technological understanding, and commercial acumen, they admit that the notion of a "oven ready" graduate is obsolete.

This is maybe more reasonable for the major businesses represented at the meeting since they have the resources to induct and train new employees – for example, IBM's Missing Semester program or Bentley's internships.

Is 'oven-readiness' more desirable for small and micro businesses?

3. Cross-discipline collaboration and collaboration

Boundaries will continue to blur between disciplines, and while designers will not be required to be experts in all fields, empathy and understanding of psychology, physics, and economics will allow them to decide when and with whom to cooperate.

As shown in Manchester School of Art's new facility and Unit X, their end-of-year module bringing all students from across the art school together to work on a live brief, walls between topic areas must be broken down, both metaphorically and literally.

To make this work, you'll need a certain mindset. "Designers, like athletes, need to be competitive as well as team players," Wayne Hemingway said during the conversation.

4. Design is at a crossroads

Beyond fashion and aesthetics, businesses are recognizing the benefits of design. The strategic value of design is becoming recognized.

"I see a fork in the road fast approaching for design," said Neal Stone, visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art and director of leap STONE. 

"On the one hand, you have the traditional specialties [product, graphic, interior, etc.] that continue to involve the craft of design, on the other, we see the more facilitative skills of the designer hard at work, convening and problem-solving in new ways such as service or business design." The power of the design process, on the other hand, is universal."


These two sectors share a core knowledge foundation, but as they progress in the profession or diversify within it, the function of convener emerges. However, these design professions tend to be valued differently, as indicated by the lower agency (crafter) salary compared to the higher consulting salary (convener). Will there be further divergence between the two areas?


5. Diversify your business to be competitive

According to industry statistics, the design industry in the United Kingdom is dominated by white, male, and most likely middle-class individuals (94 percent employed in the design sector are white compared to 90 percent for the UK economy, 67 percent are male compared to 54 percent for the UK economy).


We do know, however, that the most successful businesses are the ones that are the most varied. According to McKinsey & Company, organizations in the top quartile of executive-board diversity had a 53 percent greater return on equities on average than those in the lowest quartile. 

To improve cultural understanding and compete globally, we must foster diversity within the design sector.

Education has a critical role. Admissions practices must be examined, and a design knowledge must be developed with parents and young people from elementary school onwards.


Industry also has a responsibility to begin hiring people that do not fit the present designer stereotype.


6. Design for those who aren't designers

Professor Julius Weinberg, Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University, is a firm believer in the significance of design and feels that design techniques may be included into all of his university's disciplines.


In an ideal world, design graduates would be able to work in a variety of industries and be better represented in leadership roles, such as as MPs and CEOs. Other professions would be able to apply basic design concepts to their own work if they understood them.


But, as we've seen through our Design Challenges and work with cities, empowering communities to utilize design as a tool for co-creation with developers, planners, and local governments, among others, can enable genuine grassroots engagement with community interest at its core.

7. Make literacy a priority from the start.

Future design talent is a result of schooling from childhood onwards. Every level of education must include design literacy.


To some extent, we are succeeding in this area. Design and Technology (D&T) is included in the Early Years Framework for the first time (learning for under 5s). The Design Council helped to rewrite the D&T curriculum, which resulted in the elimination of artificial silos in the subject such as food technology, textiles, and so on. However, as a result of current educational policy, interest in the subject at GCSE and A-level is dwindling.


We believe that modernizing the subject will promote cross-disciplinarity and increase knowledge of the transferability of design techniques for all young people, regardless of their career goals.


So, while there is undoubtedly work to be done, are we expecting too much of our future designers? Is a skill mix like this impossible to achieve?

We believe that the only path ahead is to test those limits. "Let us better advocate for the contribution design can make and build on what we're doing well," said John Mathers, CEO of the Design Council, near the end of our session. We can always improve.


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