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2015: A Design Odyssey
BY
Ric Grefe
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page
1
by Richard Grefé
Designers are gifted with a special ability to see and communicate with clarity what others may not even understand. Designers are the intermediaries between information and understanding. And yet, there is a vulnerability to this vision—they can react to what is asked of them, but they do not always anticipate their own future as clearly.
Although no one can predict the future, we must prepare for it. Knowing that there are tectonic shifts occurring in the sociological, technological and geographical environments in which designers create their paths, we can begin to formulate a picture. In even the near term, just eight years from now, what will the profession look like—and how do we equip the next protégés and ourselves for this experience? More specifically, who will be the designers of 2015?
Just this past January, AIGA assembled a council of established practitioners and design educators to examine that question. Only in understanding where today’s changes are leading us will we be able assure a deep relevance in the challenges of tomorrow. Here, we set out to explore the design landscape of 2015.
Exploring the atmosphere
The communications design profession and practice have evolved dramatically over the past 20 years. During that time, we have seen the most successful practitioners progress from being “makers of things,” trained within the dimensions of finite outcomes, toward becoming conceivers of strategies, communicating complex messages clearly and considering the many ways in which those messages are received by audiences over time. The designer of today is collaborative and multidisciplinary, and must become even more so in the years ahead.
As the desired skill sets change, it is important to consider the shifting spheres of influence that designers have. But where designers have influence today may bear little in common with where we will be relevant tomorrow. This is more than asking who is likely to hire designers—although that does matter. It means that the design profession should define where it wants to have influence, assuming a proactive role, rather than a reactive one. If we want the future of design to gain influence in areas where we currently have none, we have to create strategies and initiatives for demonstrating relevance.
Not only do we need to consider changes within the profession, but we must look at larger global themes that will affect the future of design, too. We know that sustainability—cultural sustainability, as well as resource sustainability—is going to be an issue tomorrow, just as it has grown in urgency and importance today. Designers can address this theme and make a positive impact by giving thought to the long-term life span of the products and materials they design. Starting now, designers can make informed choices and be brave enough to ask questions such as, “Do we need it? Can we live without it?” not only of themselves but of their clients too. Just think how much better positioned we will be to address challenges in just eight years if we start making smarter decisions today.
Marking our discovery
The role of design is to make the complex clear and useful—but great design elevates the spirit too. This should always be the goal, to surpass expectation and make work that’s meaningful and responsible. For those who believe that design’s value is in beauty, they are right, so long as the beauty emerges from utility—usefulness and usability always come first.
One of the critical skills designers bring to problem solving is empathy—the ability, through observation, experience and intuition to understand how real people experience information and interact with messages and objects. It is with this human-centered dimension that a designer can bring new perspectives to the problem solving of others who use engineering, management or theoretical skills.
By approaching each project individually and each audience empathically, designers make significant impacts. Calling questions into question, the agile practitioner develops a framework for adaptive thinking that generates well-rounded, positive solutions. In fact, the best designer is one who when asked to design a better lawnmower will begin by questioning why a lawn is needed.
Close encounters
To paraphrase Elizabeth Sanders’ ideas on “Participatory Design,” about the shift of users and consumers into co-creators, designers need to know for whom they’ll be designing and what may be expected of them in the design process. Through ethnography, research and analysis, we have found that evaluation of the audience’s desires is a major trend that graphic design has been slow to accept, but we will cease to be relevant if we don’t integrate this way of thinking into our work. And the audience we imagine is becoming even more diverse and multicultural everyday.
This is about more than how to sell Coca-Cola in Kuwait or making sure there is racial diversity in annual report photographs. It has to do with really thinking about what we have in common and what is different and whether we should protect those differences. It unpacks the value systems that underpin design decisions and the role they play in the strategy of a global economy. There is also an opportunity to see globalization in policy terms as well as business terms—how we make the diversity of the world comprehensible through the design of information.
The final frontier
In the words of Gerhard Fischer, director of the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design at the University of Colorado, the future is not out there to be “discovered”—it has to be invented and designed. Education will have to respond to the changes that have already occurred in the professional field. Employers need a better understanding of the classroom environment, and academics need a better understanding of the workplace. Employers and academics should work together to make instruction meaningful and internships relevant to workplace needs. Business should research, evaluate, and implement lifelong learning opportunities and collaborations that meet student needs and the changing knowledge and skills requirements in the workplace.
Although we do not know what the future holds, we can anticipate who the desired designers of 2015 will be. AIGA has placed a high priority on transforming public understanding of designers from those who create appealing things to those who help to solve complex problems with innovative solutions. Together with our council, and the input of numerous perspectives from the community, we will continue this exploration and further define the ideal design candidates of tomorrow, concluding in a presentation at “Next: AIGA Design Conference” in October. Stay tuned as we share our discoveries with the Taxi audience—since the designers of 2015 will be you.
Richard Grefé
Executive Director, AIGA
Icograda Vice President 2005-2007
From 2007, AIGA will be contributing a quarterly article on the future of design. Along with the Designer of 2015 initiative, AIGA is pursuing a revised definition of a graphic designer with the US federal government. TAXI Design Network supports this endeavor. The government has not yet acted to accept the revisions.
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© 2003- 2007 by TAXI Design Network. All rights reserved.
Designers are gifted with a special ability to see and communicate with clarity what others may not even understand. Designers are the intermediaries between information and understanding. And yet, there is a vulnerability to this vision—they can react to what is asked of them, but they do not always anticipate their own future as clearly.
Although no one can predict the future, we must prepare for it. Knowing that there are tectonic shifts occurring in the sociological, technological and geographical environments in which designers create their paths, we can begin to formulate a picture. In even the near term, just eight years from now, what will the profession look like—and how do we equip the next protégés and ourselves for this experience? More specifically, who will be the designers of 2015?
Just this past January, AIGA assembled a council of established practitioners and design educators to examine that question. Only in understanding where today’s changes are leading us will we be able assure a deep relevance in the challenges of tomorrow. Here, we set out to explore the design landscape of 2015.
Exploring the atmosphere
The communications design profession and practice have evolved dramatically over the past 20 years. During that time, we have seen the most successful practitioners progress from being “makers of things,” trained within the dimensions of finite outcomes, toward becoming conceivers of strategies, communicating complex messages clearly and considering the many ways in which those messages are received by audiences over time. The designer of today is collaborative and multidisciplinary, and must become even more so in the years ahead.
As the desired skill sets change, it is important to consider the shifting spheres of influence that designers have. But where designers have influence today may bear little in common with where we will be relevant tomorrow. This is more than asking who is likely to hire designers—although that does matter. It means that the design profession should define where it wants to have influence, assuming a proactive role, rather than a reactive one. If we want the future of design to gain influence in areas where we currently have none, we have to create strategies and initiatives for demonstrating relevance.
Not only do we need to consider changes within the profession, but we must look at larger global themes that will affect the future of design, too. We know that sustainability—cultural sustainability, as well as resource sustainability—is going to be an issue tomorrow, just as it has grown in urgency and importance today. Designers can address this theme and make a positive impact by giving thought to the long-term life span of the products and materials they design. Starting now, designers can make informed choices and be brave enough to ask questions such as, “Do we need it? Can we live without it?” not only of themselves but of their clients too. Just think how much better positioned we will be to address challenges in just eight years if we start making smarter decisions today.
Marking our discovery
The role of design is to make the complex clear and useful—but great design elevates the spirit too. This should always be the goal, to surpass expectation and make work that’s meaningful and responsible. For those who believe that design’s value is in beauty, they are right, so long as the beauty emerges from utility—usefulness and usability always come first.
One of the critical skills designers bring to problem solving is empathy—the ability, through observation, experience and intuition to understand how real people experience information and interact with messages and objects. It is with this human-centered dimension that a designer can bring new perspectives to the problem solving of others who use engineering, management or theoretical skills.
By approaching each project individually and each audience empathically, designers make significant impacts. Calling questions into question, the agile practitioner develops a framework for adaptive thinking that generates well-rounded, positive solutions. In fact, the best designer is one who when asked to design a better lawnmower will begin by questioning why a lawn is needed.
Close encounters
To paraphrase Elizabeth Sanders’ ideas on “Participatory Design,” about the shift of users and consumers into co-creators, designers need to know for whom they’ll be designing and what may be expected of them in the design process. Through ethnography, research and analysis, we have found that evaluation of the audience’s desires is a major trend that graphic design has been slow to accept, but we will cease to be relevant if we don’t integrate this way of thinking into our work. And the audience we imagine is becoming even more diverse and multicultural everyday.
This is about more than how to sell Coca-Cola in Kuwait or making sure there is racial diversity in annual report photographs. It has to do with really thinking about what we have in common and what is different and whether we should protect those differences. It unpacks the value systems that underpin design decisions and the role they play in the strategy of a global economy. There is also an opportunity to see globalization in policy terms as well as business terms—how we make the diversity of the world comprehensible through the design of information.
The final frontier
In the words of Gerhard Fischer, director of the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design at the University of Colorado, the future is not out there to be “discovered”—it has to be invented and designed. Education will have to respond to the changes that have already occurred in the professional field. Employers need a better understanding of the classroom environment, and academics need a better understanding of the workplace. Employers and academics should work together to make instruction meaningful and internships relevant to workplace needs. Business should research, evaluate, and implement lifelong learning opportunities and collaborations that meet student needs and the changing knowledge and skills requirements in the workplace.
Although we do not know what the future holds, we can anticipate who the desired designers of 2015 will be. AIGA has placed a high priority on transforming public understanding of designers from those who create appealing things to those who help to solve complex problems with innovative solutions. Together with our council, and the input of numerous perspectives from the community, we will continue this exploration and further define the ideal design candidates of tomorrow, concluding in a presentation at “Next: AIGA Design Conference” in October. Stay tuned as we share our discoveries with the Taxi audience—since the designers of 2015 will be you.
Richard Grefé
Executive Director, AIGA
Icograda Vice President 2005-2007
From 2007, AIGA will be contributing a quarterly article on the future of design. Along with the Designer of 2015 initiative, AIGA is pursuing a revised definition of a graphic designer with the US federal government. TAXI Design Network supports this endeavor. The government has not yet acted to accept the revisions.
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| Richard Grefé's experience is in the development of institutions that serve social purposes. His passion is design. He holds degrees from Dartmouth College in Economics, (where he also studied book design) and Stanford, where he received an MBA. While he began his career setting type by hand, he has since been a political analyst in Asia, a writer for Time magazine on business and the economy, a public policy and urban design consulting firm director, and a manager of strategic planning and legislative strategy for public broadcasting in Washington. He joined the AIGA in 1995. A humanist and internationalist, he has lived in Munich, Bristol (England), Lausanne, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, New York, San Francisco and Washington.
Click on picture to read more about Ric Grefé. | |
| Editorial NYC Contributor |
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 | Steffen Jahn has been working as a freelance photographer since 1996. He is a member of the British Association of Photographers and the BFF. Originally, like many children, he dreamed of becoming a pilot. He was supposed to be an engineer but he found his way into photography but his fascination for anything to do with aviation and machinery never left him.
Click on picture to read more about Steffen Jahn. | |
| Photography Germany Correspondent |
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© 2003- 2007 by TAXI Design Network. All rights reserved.