Islingtons Business Design Centre
“New Designers” is the UK’s pre-eminent graduate degree show for students working in product, furniture and automotive design. It is held annually at the business design centre, Islington, London in a fantastic Victorian exhibition hall which was originally The Royal Agricultural Hall and was a contemporary of the Crystal Palace. The show is famous among UK universities with students hoping to win one of the major prizes which include high profile design internships at company’s such as Virgin and Habitat (although following the latter’s fortunes of late this may not be the case for this year)
I have been visiting the show since for a number of years and first glimpsed the hall as a wide eyed A level student who at 18 was awed by the potential of a discipline that, at the time, I was hoping to make my career. After four years of university education which included an industrial placement year I was lucky enough to be selected by my own university to exhibit my work when I graduated. The contacts I made at the show ultimately led me to my current position through a Masters degree. It was an exciting end to a fantastic period of my life but it was also hugely frustrating and, during at least, immensely disappointing.
As a student attending the show you are promised that there is no better way to get exposure to the industry and as a valued representative of such a talented university you have a good chance of securing a top line prize. The reality is that with hundreds of graduates in attendance the show is a crowded mess of product concepts, general public and hopeful students. Getting in with the right people is a difficult process (especially as most of those recruiting just look like some old duffer; not the fabulously trendy young libertine you see in your naive mind’s eye). As well as this judges tend to stick close to what they know, visiting the big central stands of universities who have performed well in previous years. As a small course or emerging degree you stand little chance of getting the notice you feel you deserve and the universities that pay the most get the best chance of good exposure.
New Designers 2011
But that’s how it goes. As a graduating student you ignore the fact that actually the show is really a showcase for the university and not yourself. It is a way of the institutions to shout look at me, look at how good we are to any prospective students or investors. This is not the problem with New Designers or British design education. What is most annoying is not the lack of time with the awards judges or the insufferable heat in the exhibition hall (thankfully cured this year with the introduction of some decent air conditioning) but the fact that there now seems to be little consideration for originality in the designs on display. This is, quite frankly, appalling as these are the brightest stars emerging in to an industry which is so centred on research and change. Talk to these new prodigies and they will tell you that they don’t know who their target market is or what the return would be on a product run. A large number have no idea how or where their designs would be produced or why even they would be producing them in the first place.
Design education has to focus on content and reason and not just on pretty renders and industry buzzwords. A good designer is not the one who can shoe horn sustainability, ergonomic and, inclusive innovation in to one multi-clause nonsensical sentence. This is especially true when the concept is, in all honesty, patronising and generally irrelevant. A new designer must be able to see the worth in an idea have the ability to conceptualise and communicate it well whilst retaining a knowledge, understanding and care for how and where it can be produced and what the organisation will gain from producing it. Design does not occur in a vacuum and designers who have no sense of the commercial side of the market will face a very steep learning curve in deed.
Exhibiting at ND2011
Just as bad are the courses that focus so much on the technicalities of designers, the process the designer must undertake, that they suppress all individuality and creativity from the students. Every year Coventry University’s automotive design stand looks the same, Bournemouth University has the same projects (although thankfully the toothpaste extractor was missing this year) and Goldsmiths exhibit nothing at all (this stand is filled with faux design workings and disgustingly cheerful students prancing around the exhibition in boiler suits trying patronisingly to show everyone else how to be designers with first week first year design briefs which ultimately fail and cause the rest of those exhibiting to hate the very site of them).
With an economy which is so dependent on the service industry and is increasingly turning to the knowledge economy to bring value and innovation the UK must address the failings that seem to be straying precariously close to the surface of the design education establishments. If the country wishes to stay at the forefront of international trade and innovation designers must embrace the fact that they are integral to the business machine, not external to it, have a responsibility to integrate with a company and bring about revolution from within rather than setting themselves on a pedestal which is being ignored more than it is being tipped. Design cannot remain aloof and cannot remain elitist and the way that it should achieve this is through its emerging New Designers as the complete a well rounded creative education.
