I've been thinking about the value placed on design over the past day. I'm sure a lot of you saw the debate surrounding the launch of StartUpBritain yesterday, most notably on the Creative Review website. StartUpBritain is a Government endorsed scheme, aiming to give advice to start-up and small businesses in the UK. As well as David Cameron's government, the initiative is also backed by highly-regarded business entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson and Peter Jones.
I'm not qualified to say whether the content of the scheme as a whole is sound, but I'd like to focus on the one aspect that caused a lot of outrage on the blog/twittersphere yesterday. The site features 4 'top tips,' the fourth tip being 'Create a logo.' This button sends you directly to a US 'crowd-sourcing' website called 99designs.com, where designers compete to produce logos from just $295.
You can read the article on Creative Review and read the many comments from infuriated designers, a lot of which I agree with.
Essentially though, this argument comes down to the value of design and people's perception of the design process.
First of all, I believe some people will always go for the cheap option, and while there are people who will always choose the cheap option, companies and designers will exist to cater for them. This is not just happening in the design industry, but every industry.
Designers always have to be on the look out for like-minded clients who do value design, and I often think the best design work comes from projects where the client trusts the process. I guess the challenge is to find these clients and to find ways of explaining the power/purpose of design to those people who might not understand its value. For anyone who has to try to find clients, there's lots of thinking to do around this area.
Recent Comments