Why Should Anyone Value Our Ideas If We Don’t? 

Good designers are bad because they make it look too easy. Their solutions and concepts are so forehead strikingly obvious a five year old/ Sue from accounts/ my neighbour’s kid could’ve done it. Like a snake eating its own tail, a good designer’s talent becomes the very thing that destroys them. A business owner, someone who has invested thousands of hours of hard graft in growing their own piece of the pie must look upon this simple, obvious, seamless design solution and cry out. “Why should I part with thousands of pounds for something a five year old/ Sue from accounts/ my neighbour’s kid could’ve done.”

But here’s the secret. The kid, Sue, the neighbour’s kid didn’t have the idea because they couldn’t have the idea because they’re off doing the stuff that keeps five year olds, accounts managers and teenagers too busy to come up with simple, obvious, seamless design solutions.

The creative industries are engaged in a continual struggle to justify the value of their creativity in an economy which recognises manual labour and knowledge as the two types of work which can be exchanged for financial reward. Both require exertion, either physical or mental and in the case of knowledge based careers such as medicine, law or architecture many many years spent in education acquiring this knowledge. Not so with graphic design. Of course, a good designer usually possesses a level of technical proficiency; able to hold a pencil and navigate design software. However, a good designer’s primary, in fact their only true commodity is their ideas.

A good idea strikes like lightening, it comes out of the blue, it can hit at any time. Like all the best cliches, it’s ring is true. A good idea does come out of the blue and it does strike like lightening. But rarely has a good idea struck on demand. It strikes in the shower, on a bike ride or while chatting with friends over a beer. A good idea strikes when there is space for it to make contact with an open, welcoming mind.

Creating space for a good idea looks very much like taking a shower, riding a bike or drinking a beer and chatting with friends. In looks, it resembles slacking more than work in the traditional sense, the work of treating patients, building a wall or balancing accounts. For someone engaged in treating, building or accounting the act of keeping the mind clear is unusual perhaps even unsettling.

In an economy which values toil, how can a designer justify the cost of an idea? The idea becomes worthless as we place emphasis on its effectiveness. We hand over the ideas, the best bit, hoping to earn a living on the implementation. We pitch, handing over our very best work in the hope of being chosen to apply it to printed and digital campaigns. Worst still, we hand it over for the promise of a ‘profile’ and repeat work from someone who has quickly learned that there will always be designers willing to give their work away for free.

It’s like cutting a tree down while sat in it’s canopy.

But why is it so difficult for ideas to be as valued as manual labor or knowledge work? Could it be because we don’t value ideas ourself? In trying to justify the existence of the ideas industry to the knowledge and manual industries we have become more and more like them. As a design industry, we’ve grown to value experience, the acquisition of knowledge and hard graft over a constant stream of fresh ideas. For an industry built and run on new ideas we spend a great deal of time telling the generators of new and fresh ideas that they are worthless.

Imagine if tomorrow you were absolved of your client responsibilities. Your domestic responsibilities lightened also and instead you were given time to focus on yourself as a designer, free to shower, ride and drink yourself to the peak of creative expression. Imagine the impact a month of unfettered responsibilities would have on that person project you’ve been meaning to get round to.

Young designers are pouring from our art schools having lived this way for years, of being taught to focus only on their own ideas. Their portfolios are full of self initiated work built on meandering deadlines and no client input. Their ideas are the freshest most unsullied in the industry so what do we do? We tell them they are worthless and set about shaping them into workers capable of assimilating with the builders and the solicitors. Having learned nothing of value in art school, they are worthless to our design businesses. They have no useful design knowledge or experience to exchange for money and must learn how to work by copying us while completing menial tasks for token (or no) reward, by way of thanks.

This is the design internship. The Ideas Industry’s attempt at helping new talent realise just how worthless their ideas are.

Well done everybody.

We know, or at least we should know why internships are bad for emerging talent. They devalue talent and destroy confidence. We’re raised to believe talent will always be noticed and hard work will always be rewarded. Intern culture erodes our ability to benchmark talent and hard work. How can an emerging designer have any confidence in their own talent and hard work if it’s never rewarded? Instead of laying the blame with intern culture, they internalise it, convinced they are neither talented or hard working enough to succeed. This says nothing of the potentially talented individuals lacking the means to even consider a career in design. Young women and men without the financial backing to work for free post study, who must look elsewhere for work which rewards immediately perhaps offering little in the way of fulfilment.

What we are left with is a homogenised design industry filled with young talent all sharing a similar, financially comfortable and supportive background. While this in no way negates their talent, we lack the contrast. The experience of young talent who grew up in poverty, in one parent households, who grew up in care. The experience of young talent who had children of their own at an early age, who were responsible for siblings or who cared for parents. The experience of young talent who grew up in deprived city boroughs and rural towns. Young talent who experienced and overcame less than ‘perfect’ childhoods with ingenuity, wit and bravery are lost to our industry for good.

Worst of all, internships prove to our clients that ideas have no value because if we aren’t willing to pay for them, why should they?