Feature:
Interior Design
“There is the notion that once a
‘Successful Designer’, one should
somehow be protected and entitled
by a divine right to be respected
and disproportionally rewarded and
compensated for the connection to name,
or icon if you will.”
but also thoroughly ill prepares them for the real world challenges. Today’s world demands that in addition to
having a thorough understanding of design, a firm grasp of all the economic and commercial imperatives that
underpin and justify the very existence of design, is required. A world that is enamoured with how something
looks is more concerned with the effect the spatial solution will have on maximizing the ROI of the brand. By
extension one can therefore say that Design follows Money, but paradoxically Money follows Design. This core
fundamental is hardly ever taught, and seldom understood in design education.
By further explanation, the term ‘Design Led Innovation’ is emerging as a fundamental business proposition
which is rapidly being adopted by many design firms and many small and large retail corporations. The value
that design, in this context, brings to an organization is increasingly being seen by business as a strategic
driver of company growth. Fundamentally the tool and process most applied towards ensuring this outcome is
called ’Design Thinking’ and whilst widely adopted by international business, has not enjoyed the same level of
awareness and required focus in local Interior design teaching. This process of ‘Design Thinking’- includes the
study of natural consumer behaviour, supported by sound business fundamentals, and sits at the heart of the
disconnect between Design Teaching and Design Doing.
Empirical evidence that this new process of design thinking is no longer optional, is the study done by the
Design Management Institute (DMI), a Boston-based nonprofit organisation focused on design management. It
was calculated that in the past 10 years, design-driven companies outperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500--a
stock market index of 500 large publicly traded companies--by 228%. These companies included brands such
as Apple, Coca-Cola, Ford, Herman Miller, IBM, Nike, Proctor and Gamble, Starbucks and Disney.
There is also a second very controversial point of disconnect between Design Teaching and real world Design
Doing. That is the notion that once a ‘Successful Designer’, one should somehow be protected and entitled by a
divine right to be respected and disproportionally rewarded and compensated for the connection to name, or
icon if you will. Whilst this may have been the acceptable way of designers pre the economic crunch, this reality
no longer exists. Our value should equal the value we bring. Schools have yet to catch on.
At a recent Ted Talk, Nille Juul Sørensen, CEO of the Danish Design Centre literally kicked an iconic design
chair on stage. He supported his action with this view. “Do the designs we do make sense and give meaning
to people? Our designs probably give meaning to 1% of the world’s population. We need to start designing for
99% of the population if we truly want to influence the future...”
If the future of interior design therefore belongs to those who understand the power of design to affect change
towards a sound bottom line investment at the forefront of business thinking, has the time not arrived for an
Interior Design Business School? I predict that at some point somewhere in the future, someone will write an
article similar to this reminiscing in disbelief on the time back in the day, when no such school was around. AD
africandesignmagazine.com
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