Design Education: The New Deal

Christian Guellerin Tans. by Chen Xin

Two pillars in a shattered context: globalized world and faltering capitalism

The world has become “global,” enhanced means of communication and transportation have made it accessible to all as a whole, in its“global” dimension. A language – a type of English-based gibberish,a pidgin – has made it intelligible. If this trend paves the way to more freedom, then we should see it as fruitful. If this trend helps people reach a better understanding of the Others, accept their dif f erences and learn from their culture, then we should rejoice over it.

Economically speaking, in Western countries globalization marked the end of the industrial era that began in the mid-nineteenth century. Means of production are now being redistributed according to new patterns. Today workforce-based industries are being relocated in China and in India; tomorrow they may even start settling in lower-production-cost countries of f ering better prof i t margins. Benef i ts and prof i t margins are capitalism’s mainspring.The ongoing worldwide wealth redistribution is bound to happen /unavoidable. Entire sectors of the traditional industry are currently collapsing in Western countries. GM and Ford, worldwide symbols of the jubilant industrialization and Welfare society are undergoing great upheavals.

The well-known “assembly line” that engineers have strived to“rationalize” over time may soon reach the end of the line. “Total quality” policies have only sped up their decline process. These policies contributed to the advent of cost management, to gradually making it impossible to veer – however slightly – from the process agreed upon, to annihilating all creative potential and ultimately to place the industry in the hands of low-cost labor developing countries. For 150 years the sole concern of the most industrialized countries has been to keep becoming better and better at what they already knew how to do. But in a globalized world where competition fails to be ruled by fair practices, there is no point in improving one’s know-how ad nauseam. There is no reason why the Chinese shouldn’t do as good as we do with lesser means.

Some countries – such as the United Kingdom – anticipated the late-century industrial chaos by turning their back on their factories to favor the tertiary and f i nancial sectors. Finance-based logics according to which money only serves f i nancial interests without any wealth-sharing, has led the world to a terribly harmful crisis whose yet unknown aftermaths will probably be disastrous. The pound –a deeply ingrained symbol of the City – is now walking on shaky ground.

We are now coming to the bitter awareness that capitalism, this great wealth-generating economic system is, in fact and by essence totally devoid of ethical values. Because States failed to keep a strong hold on it and in the name of a liberalism too often mistaken for liberty,capitalism has solely enabled a bunch of happy few to get richer,leaving a vast majority of consumers out in the cold, frowning in frustration at not being invited to join the bountiful feast.

Capitalism must be rethought anew. State governments must reclaim their role in taming it and share the generated wealth so as to gradually f i ll in the gap between nations based on dif f erent societal models. Economies must strive in the service of Humankind and cease to promote the sole f i nancial interests.

Two economic opportunities to seize: green economy and social networks

Our planet is in jeopardy. Therefore we must lay new foundations for new production and consumption patterns to spread out. But will Humankind and science manage to do so? Looks doubtful… Never has the world population been so concerned with climate change and environmental hazards, yet never have marketers sold as many fourwheel-drive cars to meet consumer needs. Faced with such a paradox we must admit that ethical values and virtuousness def i nitely do not belong to the marketing jargon.

Though by essence capitalism is far from being ethical though we must not buy into ethical marketing, we must nonetheless endeavor to make green economy into a major tool to shape the new industrial and commercial patterns to come. If it proves hard to believe in the moral nature of human beings in the face of environmental issues, to compensate for non-existing ethics, taking an environment-friendly stance could be extremely benef i cial to economies all over the world.The re-industrialization of the world will not happen without our coming to awareness of the benef i ts inherent in green economy in the name of ethics, of course, but f i rst and foremost in the name of interest.

Green economy is a tremendous source of prof i t and thereby it could heal the planet.

Besides – as freedom-threatening as it may seem in the long run –a newly emerged sociological trend is gradually shaking our way of perceiving vital space and doting it with new meaning. Becoming part of a network is a means to tighten and create bonds at a time when globalization jeopardizes close relationships with our neighbors. On the economical level, networks lie at the core of a new approach to marketing in which the market and related needs would no longer be needs per se but would be willingly generated,conceived and shaped just like industrial products. Then the market would not be taken into consideration after production but generated prior to production. This kind of marketing stemming from a technical and scientif i c approach to information could be totally overlooked by market-engrossed marketers. However the ref l ection upon social networks – how they are conceived and used – will never be disregarded by designers, always on the look-out for new trends.

Design, a strategic discipline in tune with the major socioeconomical issues

So what role should design take on? Should we expect engineers to launch and drive the new industrial revolution Western countries have long been hoping for. Should we expect marketers to re-invent markets? Nothing is less certain because, to them, market trends mirror consumer needs. They take an overwhelming importance,thus totally putting the creative process aside.

Design and designers might take on a strategic position within companies bound to develop and grow bigger. To cope with the oncoming industrial turmoil to come many of those companies are going to have to adjust, evolve and veer towards new working methods. With globalization the era of total quality has been supplanted by creative and innovation-oriented approaches to industrial production: The era of total quality has come to an end, overthrown by creation and innovation-oriented approaches concerned with socio-economic issues. Now one cannot keep“improving and further what one already knows how to do” but rather “do something new by generating unknown matter from already known matter so as to create new, sustainable and large-scale situations.” This is how we should rethink the industrial paradigms in which Western economies now faced with globalization are rooted.However, should the automobile industry ask what they can do with their expertise for products other than cars, it would then be urgent to call on to designers.

The know-how of the car industry is focused primarily on engine technology explosion, the organization of the assembly line and particularly powerful distribution networks: “What can be done with this if it is not to make automobiles?

This is the only question that the leaders of General Motors and Renault, to whom one has lent billions of dollars or Euros, should ask themselves.

Designers are the innovation-oriented craftsmen whose duty it is to rethink the future of companies and the capitalism of tomorrow.Apple*’s tremendous success lies in its making creative skills a longterm and recurrent asset for the company, in its ability to become one of the leading online-music sellers at a time when engineers mistake it for a mere computer manufacturer.

Industrial societies are going to have to come out of the industrial branches in which they have been locked up for so long, and learn to do something else. This revolution is not to be triggered by engineers nor marketers, this revolution belongs to designers. The only companies that will live on are those that will prove able to switch from a working method and a profession to another, thus ceaselessly creating their own history. Acting as true pivotal stones designers will lie at the core of these ef f orts to keep mutating, to keep changing profession on a continuing basis by following a management-based organization and building new methods to take new strategic stances so as to generate and handle the much-needed change.

Design is by essence a human-centered discipline aiming to make tomorrow better. Conceiving products, packaging, creating the layout of spaces, displaying images are meaningless unless – like all creative initiatives – are centered upon Mankind and usage and one strives to infuse visions of tomorrow with images of progress.

Designers are the mainstays and initiators of eco-conceptionrelated issues within companies. They must make sure to convince their co-workers within companies that eco-conception is a vital process. Because as soon as eco-conception initiatives will take on an economic dimension, green economy will automatically start soaring and become a prevalent concern for companies willing to keep up to date. Designers are the key f i gures of a new type of marketing applied to sustainable and ethical eco-design that will help meeting consumer needs and improving usage.

Tremendous evolution of training courses in design: workbased education brought to the fore.Here is a question education institutions should def i nitely strive to answer: how can we make sure graduates who gained technical training in design schools manage to become “managers” and/or“strategists” f i t for all the challenges modern societies and companies are faced with on a daily basis?

Here is a question that should be addressed to institutions teaching design: how can we make sure that designers attending a technical training at design schools become “managers” and/or “strategists”with an educational background that meets the requirements of a company and equips them with suffi cient skills to take up the challenges the f i rm is faced with?

Should designers lag behind as mere technicians in the creative fi eld and keep letting engineers and marketing specialists overtake them and f i ll the positions of strategic innovation departments or product development managers? Or don’t they nowadays have the opportunity to fulf i ll executive management duties commensurate with their skills, their talent, their culture and peculiar vision of tomorrow’s world: a user-centered world where humankind lies at the heart of all economically oriented ref l ection.

The training mission assigned to design schools has greatly evolved.They no longer aim at educating merely creative technicians but at training professionals in the creative f i eld. Much is at stake here and the answer proposed by schools has an important impact on the future of the profession, of companies, of the economy and even on our society’s future – since it is the designer’s vocation to f i nd answers for it.

Design schools have always strived to train creative professionals acknowledged for their abilities to invent new shapes, new products,to f i nd new solutions with regards to processes, materials and/or services. Good designers are, above all, recognized as such for their ability to create.

This is what other people – society in general or professionals such as engineers, marketing specialists, managing directors etc. – expect them to do: to come up with ideas no one had ever thought of…This image of the designer – a creative, slightly deviant professional entrusted with the mission to shake up business executives and society as a whole – has been conveyed by all designers and all schools. Indeed, this “expected deviance” is claimed by creative professionals as part of their know-how, as a certain trademark.Schools and design students quite easily agree that the revelation of creative skills could have a praiseworthy and gratifying impact…

However, in doing so, they fail to take into account many aspects that now hinder and delay the acknowledgement of their work within companies and lessen their chances to climb the hierarchical ladder..Today design schools propose curriculums that have evolved a lot:Design schools have realized that students in design must be introduced to the industrial and economic f i elds during their training courses. They no longer solely focus upon talent, technique and know-how but now evaluate the social and economical relevance of student projects and the students’ ability to enter the job market.More and more emphasis is put on management skills required for teamwork and the ability to work as part of a team. This type of skills had been overlooked too long by design schools where the sole individual talent was taken into account. Because of this, instead of being shared and showcased ideas and newly created items have been kept like a buried treasure. When dealing with creations aimed at improving the world we should make sure the largest possible amount of people can actually take advantage of it.

Communication has now become an essential criterion in evaluating the relevance of students’ output. As obvious as it may seem, this proposal has never been taken seriously, as though creation was suffi cient unto itself.

Design schools have opened up to other disciplines so that the work of their students can be evaluated by a many-sided audience.Methods inherited from the Applied Arts tradition, based on a onesided relationship between omniscient Masters and supposedly unenlightened apprentices entailed an in-breeding process that has long prevented the discipline from gaining recognition and ground.Today schools endeavor to create diverse, mixed juries that bring together decision-makers, scientists and experts with all kinds of backgrounds.

Education in design schools has greatly evolved. It now increasingly encompasses the dif f erent elements I have just mentioned. In most institutions studies are increasingly opening up to the job market;multi-disciplinary teaching teams have been created and teamwork has been encouraged. Design institutions now set up links with business and engineering schools. Students learn to work with others. Companies are involved in many projects, students carry out internships and some schools now require students to put their knowledge into practice during a long-term internship so as to promote professional relations between schools and companies. A designer’s degree no longer simply validates the technical knowhow or mere skills but also the ability to f i nd a suitable work position and to engage into a fulf i lling career. Talent revelation and creativity are no longer a goal but a means, a sine qua non, a prerequisite to success.

But a lot remains yet to be done. To make design into a management discipline, we must transform the designer into a manager, a project manager, someone able to lead, to communicate, to impress. The mere ability to create is no longer suffi cient. If designers keep claiming their dif f erence and creative marginality, they run the risk of being reduced to this single feature and are likely to become suspicious for people who could possibly entrust them with other responsibilities. They must get out of their offi ces and share their ideas. One of the major challenges for design institutions to take up will be to provide students in design with enough management knowledge and self-assurance to aim for management-oriented once their talent is acknowledged within companies after they make use of their technical skills for a few years. In-house designers at age 25,what positions will they take up at age 35 or 45?

Thanks to their transversal culture, designers now qualify for team leader positions within companies in the creative fi elds. Why should the positions of product development managers in innovating fi rms only be coveted by business school graduates? Why should only engineers be hired as research and development managers?Besides, in order to transform design into a strategic discipline –which it is by essence – designers must stop refraining themselves from reaching top executive positions.

The strength of engineering schools lies in that engineers have never excluded the possibility of becoming top executives. Why, then,should designers not strive for the same? All the more as they are dealing on a daily basis with crucial issues centered on humankind,usage and progress. All of those necessarily require skills to become a “manager” whose pro fi tability will reach far beyond the mere fi nancial sphere, an “ecological executive”, so to speak.

The need to adapt curriculums to a shifting context All higher education institutions are soon going to have to cope with major development-related issues, namely:

Strengthening the winning triumvirate “research – education –business” shaping their curriculums. If obviously most schools now favor work-based curriculums, there is still a lot to be done to organize research and knowledge production activities in coherence with social and economic. “Research in design” raises many interrogations thus giving researchers much food for thought.But it often amounts to conducting research about what “research in design” could be. Of course, such a mise en abyme is far from being effi cient or serious. Nonetheless institutions must imperatively voice their opinions about this issue so as to improve the quality of their outputs. Along the same line the bond between education institutions and their industrial partners should be redef i ned and clarif i ed: schools can no longer stand to be substituted for agencies.“Incubation centers” – where new projects will be hatched – must be implemented. Moreover, like engineering schools, design schools must evolve into “innovation centers.”

Giving a true international dimension to curriculums. The signing of the Bologna Treaty which lays the foundation of a worldwide organization of higher education curriculums around Bachelor’s,Master’s and PhD’s will probably result in students pursuing their Bachelor’s in their native country and their Master’s Degree abroad.Master’s Degrees in design are but a budding initiative for now. Only the most competitive Master’s Degrees – complying with the winning triumvirate “research–education–business” will attract foreign students.

As schools gradually begin to organize their training courses around“socio-economical themes,” cross-disciplining and versatile skills will undoubtedly be brought to the fore. The former segmentation framing design education according to traditional categories such as product design, interior architecture, graphic design, and multimedia is going to be shattered to pieces, giving way to a more global-scoped practice of design. Moreover this new segmentation will also tighten the bond between engineering schools and business schools through jointly run curriculums. Because design is a technical activity fundamentally grounded in graphic representation and handcraft no other training course will be in a position to claim to be able to train operational designers in a few weeks time. Merging design education with other training courses could result in depreciating the very jobtitle “designer” because this label would be used to refer to activities other than design. A true designer is a professional who masters specif i c skills and a very unique technical know-how.

Education institutions are also going to implement exemplary sustainable development policies. The recent signing of the Cumulus Kyoto Declaration by all Cumulus Network member schools shows how committed institutions and designers are. Schools must strive to grow into some kinds of idea labs where projects would be conducted with a view to setting up a conception-based marketing to be implemented prior to any market creation.

To f i nish with I would say that there are two ways to consider globalization and the emergence of newly industrialized countries.The f i rst point of view equates challenging and questioning our whole economic system; it has resulted in a bottomless economic crisis. The second one opens up doors to new gigantic markets.Today all designers must busy themselves with adapting products to the Chinese, Indian, Brazilian markets… This opportunity will probably trigger new ref l ections about identity issues and how to make a dif f erence. In this overwhelming global market where cultural standardization based on a shared bastardized lingua franca looms on the horizon, the identity of creation takes on a revolutionary depth. Economically and socially speaking designers must strive to make sense out of dif f erences, because dif f erences are what makes Humankind so complete and plentiful.

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Cross, Nigel. 1993 « Editorial ». Design Studies, 14 (3) : 226 Cross Nigel.2001. Designerly ways of Knowing: design discipline versus design science. Design issues Friedman Ken. 2000. Creating Design Knowledge: from research to practise. Proceedings on international conference on design and technology

F.O Gehry in R.J. Boland and F. Collopy, Managing as designing(Palo Alto, CA: Standford University Press)

Manzini Ezio, Walker Stuart, Wylant Barry, 2008. Enabling solutions for sustainable living : a workshop. University of Calgary Press

Morelli Nicola. 2007. Social Innovation and New Industrial Contexts: Can Designers « Industrialize » Socially Responsible Solutions ?Design issues. MIT. Cambridge. Massachussets

Peters Michael A, Murphy Peter, Marginson Simon, 2008. Creativity and the global knowledge economy. Lang, Peter Publishing,Incorporated

Thackara John. 2005. In the bubble : designing in a complex world.Mit press Cambridge Massachussets

Jick Todd 1991. Implementing the change. Harvard Business school Case N9.491-114

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Christian Guellerin（法国南特大西洋设计学院国际艺术设计院校 联盟主席）

Christian Guellerin（Director-L’Ecole de design Nantes Atlantique President-Cumulus Association）

译文：

动荡局面下的两大支柱：全球化市场和颠簸的资本主义世界变得“全球化”意味着在这“全球”的维度里，通讯和交通变得畅通无阻。若这为人们获得自由铺平了道路，那我们可以认为它功不可没；若这种趋势增进了与他人之间的沟通和理解，认可和学习了他国文化，那么我们应该为此欢欣鼓舞。从经济的角度来说，西方国家的“全球化”标志着始于十九世纪中期的工业时代已经结束，意味着生产资料通过新的模式被重新分配。如今，资本主义将以劳动力为基础的工业重新分布在了中国和印度。以后，它们可能又会被分布在劳动力成本更低的国家以获取更多的利润空间。效益和利润空间是资本主义的主要动力。世界财富的不断地重新分配是不可避免的。西方国家整个的传统工业都在持续崩溃,曾代表着工业时代一度兴旺繁荣的美国通用和福特公司，以及西方的福利社会制度正面临着危机。

必须抓住的两大经济机遇：绿色经济和社交网络

我们的星球正面临着危险。因此，我们需要为我们新的产品和消费模式打下基础，铺设更广的平台。但是，人类凭着科学就真的能够做到么？看上去没这么简单。整个人类从未像现在这样，如此关切天气变化和环境公害，市场上也从未为满足消费需求而卖掉过那么多的四轮汽车。面对如此窘境，我们不得不承认市场利益明显与道德价值观相悖。虽然资本主义完全不和道德沾边，但我们应该尽力利用绿色经济来塑造新的工业和商业模式，它是丰厚利益的来源，从中，我们也可以找到治愈我们地球的途径。

除此以外，一种新兴的社会趋势正在逐渐打破我们对虚拟世界的看法并且赋予了它新的定义。曾几何时，当全球化威胁着我们亲密无比的邻里关系时，成为网络的一部分就是创造并紧密我们关系纽带的一种途径。

设计学，与社会经济议题相一致的战略性学科

那么，设计应该承担什么样的角色呢？可以确定的是，市场趋势折射了消费需求。设计学和设计家们可以在公司内承担战略性的角色，从而发展和壮大。为了应对行将到来的工业混乱，许多此类的公司不得不调整、转变和演化出新的工作模式。随着全球化发展，那个注重总体质量的时代已经被以创造与革新为中心的工业化生产方式所取代：以重质量为主的时代已渐进尾声，推翻它的正是与社会经济议题有关的创造与革新化生产方式。现在，我们不再专注于“改进和发展已经知道如何生产的东西”,而是关注“在已知的事物中发现未知的事物，从而创造新的，可持续发展的大规模生产环境”。设计家们就是这以创造为中心的工匠，他们的责任就是反思公司的未来，资本主义的明天。

设计必须是以人为本，以让明天更美好为目的的学科，是起着与生态有关的中流砥柱作用的发起者；设计师是适应可持续发展、生态伦理设计市场的关键人物，使产品符合消费者的需求，改善实用性。

设计学课程的巨大变革：工作适用型教育受到追捧

教育机构必须考虑到的问题是：我们如何来保证，在设计学院受到专业训练的学生能够适应现代社会公里司每天面对的挑战，从而成为称职的经理人或决策者？设计类学校的训练课程已经经历了突破性的变革。他们的目标不再仅仅是培育富有创造力的技术员，而是具备创造力的专业人员。设计学院致力于培养富有创造力的专业人员，他们有发明新模型、新产品，找到与加工、材料和服务有关的解决办法的能力，从而受到人们的认可。总的来说，一个好的设计师因他们的创造力而受到认同。这就是其他人，即社会上的大多数人或专业人员，比如工程师、市场专员、总经理所期待的设计师：那些总是能冒出别人想不到的主意的人。

如今，设计学院各课程已经经过了很大的革新：设计学校意识到有必要推荐自己的学生在学习期间到工业或经济领域去学习。公司不再只关注于学生的天赋、技术和原理掌握，而且还关注学生参与的与社会与经济相关的实践项目以及学生适应工作的能力。重视团队合作时的管理能力和团队合作能力的培养。这样的能力长期被设计学校所忽略，以前更加重视的是个人能力的培养。沟通交际能力也是衡量学生是否符合社会需要的必要标准。设计学院的课程还向其他专业公开，这样一来，学生们的工作可以受到多方人群的评估。

灵活对应的课程

所有的高等教育学校都要应对是否与社会主要发展相关的问题：加强“研究—教育—商业”的铁三角模式，以此来安排课程设置。虽然现在各大学校都支持工作适用型课程的设置，但组织调研以及与社会和经济相一致的知识型产品活动这一方面，还有相当多的工作要做。

真正的国际化课程。博洛尼亚条约为建立起一个在世界范围内提供学士、硕士、博士的高等教育课程体系打下了基础，它的签订使得学生在修完学士学位之后选择出国进修硕士学位。而设计学的硕士现今只是个处于萌芽的新兴方向，只有最有竞争力的设计学硕士课程，即遵照“研究—教育—商业”铁三角模式才会吸引来外国的莘莘学子们。