Clients and Patrons
The Reasons Behind the Issue
At a time of general economic difficulty and continuous changes in the sphere of visual communication, “Progetto grafico” is focusing its discussion on the question of clients and their relationship with designers.
by Carlo Vinti and Davide Fornari
This article (qui in italiano) has been featured on Progetto Grafico, an international graphic design magazine published by Aiap, the italian association for visual communication design. The issue #29, “Clients and Patrons”, has been edited by Carlo Vinti and Davide Fornari with Riccardo Falcinelli. You can subscribe to the magazine here and buy the current issue here.
Historically, industrial, commercial or institutional clients not only provided graphic designers with employment opportunities and economic support but they also influenced their design choices, and played an important role in building the image that designers themselves have as professionals. Yet, the client is almost always forgotten when we talk about graphic design. In historical accounts their voice is often unheard, even more than in the history of art, long attentive to the complex relationship between artists and patrons and the aspects of the work clearly related to the client. Moreover, it is significant that today the issue comes up again with force in the visual arts, this time with an inclusive approach involving clients in the creation, as recommended by the Nouveaux commanditaires protocol.¹ In the recent critical debate on graphic design the issue of commissioning has been left largely in the background, despite the fact that clients continue to be key players in the process of designing and producing communication artifacts, as are the various figures that mediate between designers and businesses or institutions.
The graphic designer’s position towards the patron has taken on numerous different shapes over time: from an apologia and nostalgia for “ideal” clients such as Adriano Olivetti to recriminations on the array, far more numerous, of bad clients. There are designers who have chosen privileged exponents of worlds which already recognized them: alternative music, for example, or a certain political militancy. There are those who have always held that designers should take a step back, sacrificing their own voice to “serve” the objectives of their customers, and those who, like Tibor Kalman or Gianni Sassi, have adopted the philosophy that “the client does not know it but he pays me to do the things I like.”² Finally, there are those who — like Rudy VanderLans with the magazine Emigre — have tried to question the definition of graphic design as a profession “that organizes and shapes clients’ ideas”, proposing graphic designers “as facilitators and producers of messages, ideas and products.”³
Since the 1980s, a number of changes have affected the relationship between designer and client. On the one hand, the desire for independence of the latest generations of designers has led them increasingly to follow directions far removed from the concept of graphic design as a professional service delivered to a customer. On the other hand, entire business sectors and institutions have begun to turn to professionals far removed from the traditional world of graphic design, with skills far closer to marketing and a strategic knowledge of communication. Meanwhile, graphic artists have repeatedly tried to rethink their position, appropriating the roles of author, editor, producer and, not least, entrepreneur. The various practices of self-production and the spread of self-initiated projects have led many to believe they can do without clients or at least replace them with less cumbersome definitions, such as partners or collaborators.
But is a future of graphic design without clients really conceivable? What kind of clients are looking for graphic designers today? And what kind of designers do the different clients have in mind? In what context does collaboration between designers and clients take place? These are just some of the questions which began to shape this issue of Progetto grafico.
We chose the term committenza (similar to the English patronage) because in Italian the term is still widely used and because we were interested in its etymology: the noun derives from the Latin verb committere, which in addition to the sense of entrust, order and request, originally means the act of putting together two or more things. English distinguishes more clearly between patronage (support of someone’s work) and client (who buys or pays for goods and services), but in etymological terms the two have in common the idea of trust and of putting yourself in someone else’s hands. This relationship of trust is a founding tenet of the modern professions. However, by rendering more accessible knowledge and tools that professionals traditionally felt to be theirs, the digital revolution has challenged the certainties of many professions, not least that of graphic designers.
In this broad and complex panorama we believe will be useful, if not urgent, to go back to questioning what committenza means in contemporary graphic designers and what kind of relationship exists today between graphic designers and clients, taking into account the different forms that relationship can have.
ph. by Ferry Andrê de la Porte
We selected a series of critical writings on the issue of committenza, starting with the issues and topics mentioned above. We asked Giovanni Anceschi to return to the topics of his 2005 essay, Il committente competente (published in diid disegno industriale — industrial design, 16, 2005), which referred to a seemingly happy time for public commissions in the cultural heritage sector. The essay was an account of the author’s time at the research unit Graphic and Multimodal Systems at the Politecnico di Milano. The unit was designed
to form commissions aimed at enhancing an Italian cultural heritage opening up to the graphic design market. Anceschi’s paper enables us to take stock of these years and look at some of the changes that have occurred.
Gianluca Camillini and Jonathan Pierini have explored how the client is imagined in various contexts, and what form they take; for example when simulated for teaching purposes, when the designer is his or her own client on self-commissioned projects, and finally when graphic projects are designed for self-promotion, an extreme but increasingly common situation.
Antonio Iadarola has analyzed the working conditions of graphic practitioners and collaboration with clients in a new scenario marked by constant requests for change, a world where everyone is a designer and where innovation is shared and open.
Finally, we asked authors to analyze some particularly significant projects and case studies from the point of view of the relationship between graphic designers and clients. Giorgio Ruggeri has investigated the role of Progress Film in the production of film posters in the gdr, where it had an almost cultural monopoly. Emanuela Bonini Lessing has addressed the thorny matter of recent competitions for the corporate identity of cities and major events in Italy, and ends the issue with some advice on “a way of keeping calm.”
Among these theoretical, critical and historical essays, at the centre of the issue we decided to include a survey that gives a voice to professionals, clients, educators and heads of foundations that fund the work of graphic designers. We chose some particularly representative people and institutions to explain how relationships with clients and patrons can develop. We asked the heads of some of the best post-graduate graphic design courses in the world — École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, isia in Urbino, the Royal College of Art in London, Werkplaats Typografie Arnhem, Parsons The New School of Design and the School of Visual Arts in New York — how they teach future graphic designers how to relate with their clients.
Five of the best known and appreciated studios and designers on the contemporary scene — NORM, Mark Porter, Project Projects, R2Design, Leonardo Sonnoli — answered our questions about the nature of their relationship with clients, from the description of an ideal client to the degree of conflict that can arise when collaborating with them.
Similarly, we have chosen a series of figures representing committenza or who play an intermediary role between designers and clients: Evelina Bazzo, managing director of the studio Umbrella and design manager of many design brands; Massimo Benvegnù, brand manager of Arper; Giovanni De Mauro, director of Internazionale; Christina Reble, former head of publications at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich; as well as a consultant to the fashion label Alberto Aspesi.
Public support for graphic design from universities and foundations — scholarships, grants and residencies — is a more recent phenomenon that offers an interesting source of debate. The work of graphic designers has reached such significant public visibility as to enter the funding programmes of public and private foundations. This is why we decided to sound out the views of those institutions who because it is their mission or out of choice fund the work of graphic designers, in all its various meanings. The Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice, founded in 1899 to support young Venetian artists, has begun to include graphic designers among its grantees. The Japanese dnp Foundation for the promotion of culture was created in 2008 to help support and develop culture through the promotion of graphic design and graphic arts. The Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, founded in 1948, provides post-graduate research programmes in design, applied arts and theories of art. The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, created in 1939, supports many of the artistic and cultural activities of the Swiss Confederation and has recently launched a specific programme to support design. In all these cases we interviewed a representative of the institution and a grantee, a designer who received funding from one of the institutions, to find out what the impact of public support was on their professional practice.
In conclusion therefore, the aim of this issue is to shed light on a multifaceted scene, a fact which may perhaps hearten those who complain about the eternal unpreparedness of customers and the need to educate and re-educate the client in terms of graphic design. Aiap set out its rules in the Guide to fees,⁴ published in 1962 and updated in subsequent editions. Along with many other countries, Italy shares total freedom on the graphic design market, where the relationship with clients is equally problematic.⁵
1. http://www.nouveauxcommanditaires.eu (last accessed 20/11/2015).
2. The quote is reported by Massimo Dolcini in a short essay on Sassi published in http://www.giannisassi.it (last accessed 18/11/2015).
3. Rudy VanderLans, Emigre. The End (Final Issue), 2005.
4. Beppe Chia, Marco Tortoioli Ricci, Mario Piazza, Andrea Rudelli, Giangiorgio Fuga (edited by), Guida agli onorari (Milan: Aiap edizioni, 2007).
5. Yves Robert (edited by), La commande de design graphique (Paris: Centre national des arts plastiques, 2014), free download on http://www.cnap.graphismeenfrance.fr/sites/default/files/commandedesigngraphique_web.pdf.
