This is a follow up to my previous post: The death of graphic design.
The emerging question was “can creativity be taught” and if so, are people in design schools actually doing it wrong ?
We felt that maybe the decreasing quality in design production those past years may be due to a lack of proper education in the design field. I ain’t no teacher and do not wish to judge how people do their teaching. Plus, coming from a fine art (with a spe. in graphic design) background, I’ve got a pretty centered view of the design education field.

Teachers, as well as students, have a very different view of what should be taught during the school years and maybe none is good enough. Maybe it’s a mix of different influences that’ll end up making a proper “design education”. As for teaching creativity, I feel that it digs out the never ending question about skills and determinism: are your born creative or do you become a creative person over time? I guess it’s a set of tricky questions, and couldn’t help but fumble with it for the past week… the more I thought about it, the more it became clear that there’s no evident answer to that.

Can creativity be taught?

As a matter of fact, there’s a pretty simple answer to this one. Yes.
Creativity, as “being able to produce ideas and concepts on demand”, can be taught. You can teach people methods to produce ideas. You can train a brain to think about concepts. you can even teach someone to execute a task properly in order to make that idea happen. What you can’t do, tho, is force them to have GOOD ideas. You can teach them to be creative, you can even teach them to be skilled, but I definitely believe that you can’t teach someone to be talented if he or she hasn’t a single sparkle of talent in there.

What’s wrong with the design education

So, in the end, what’s the problem with design schools? Why are they so wrong that the jury from the Festival de Chaumont decided there were no student work fine enough to be presented to the world?
In my opinion, it’s not only about the schools.

. There’re too many people who want to become a designer. Courses are overcrowded, schools are multiplying like mushrooms, and wannabe designers are everywhere. As I said, you can teach everything but talent, and as long as selection won’t be harder, the quality level won’t rise. There are almost twice as much untalented people out there seeking for work than there are really great designers.

. But plenty of them are not ready to work it out. I will not say that design schools are perfect. Most of them lacks some fundamentals, like teaching people about professional life, technical issues, or design thinking. Many teachers are outdated, or have lost the faith. But how many students actually involve themselves into school life? How many learn by themselves — something they’ll need to do further in life anyway?

What’s wrong is that the only thing than can’t be teached is the only thing that definitely is missing in the design landcape. People with a view. Ambition. Talent. It’s not that they are less than before. It’s just that they’re drowned in the mass, hidden behind the thousands other people in front of them that showcase their work. Of course, awesome people will still get noticed. But great people, whose work would have catched your eyes in the past, are buried under others, and don’t have space to bloom to their full potential. Employers are being more selective because they can afford it. As a result, the average designer pay range is lowering, unemployement is rising, and work quality is decreasing. Less schools, more selection, and more commitment from students would definitely help with that. Then only, thinking about what should be teached would be a real matter.

As I’ve been fumbling through books and blogposts about creativity lately, I’ve be toying about the idea of the “perfect workplace” for creative minded people. The more I thougth about it, the more it was clear that most workplaces are not made for people using their left brain a bit too much on a daily basis. What would be the perfect place? The perfect work hours? The perfect direct environment to strike that little sparkle of creativity on a daily basis?

SPACE  AND TIME CONTINUUM

We can possibly get inspired everywhere and everytime. Working in the creative industry (or in any kind of job that involves deep thinking) doesn’t stick to the traditional workplace. Most of us will find our best ideas brushing our teeths, doing the dishes, or simply during their sleep.

In an utopian world, the perfect workplace wouldn’t force you to stay at the same place, for a definite number of hours.
Look how succesful design or development companies have destroyed the current work hour scheme. Carsonified works 4 days a week. 37signals tries to end up a day at 5PM everyday. When Sagmeister feels like his inspiration is running down, he takes a whole year to rediscover himself in Bali. Free time doesn’t mean that you’re not working. It means that you’re feeding your brain with lots and lots of new experiences, that will soon feed your work. Look at how much inspiration you had when you were just a design student with far too much time on your hands.

As for space, the biggest challenge we face is that it doesn’t change. It doesn’t fluctuate. It stays the same while your work is constantly changing. Having a nice work station is a must for every person that stays more than 8 hours a day in front of a computer. But triggering a burst of cretaivity while watching the same walls or the same office is not always as easy as one can think. Sometimes, you could just have the best idea around the street corner. Unless you’re a freelancer, there are few chances that your workplace allows for that kind of time and space breakage.
Changing some of your habits might do the trick for a while. The global picture is to be able to break your daily routine to refresh your brain. Eat somewhere different every day. Meet new people. Take new ways to go to work. Change what you can on your workstation. Change your musical influences for the day. Break the space and time continuum so that things appear different. If you can’t really have the perfect workplace, make it happen.

RESPECT, TRUST, LISTEN

The thing I’ve heard most while chatting with other designers over on twitter, is that most of them don’t feel trusted enough in their actual job. Be it by clients, or anybody you’re working with, lack of trust or listening can lead to an enormous amount of frustration. No need to talk about the infmous number of posts about managing clients here. Sometimes it’s not clients only. Having people constantly over your shoulder, or sworse, changing things without asking for it is a constant reminder that being a designer is not yet considered a job valuable enough for its opinion to be taken into account.

In an utopian world, the perfect workplace would trust you enough not to watch everything you make and ask for changes. The perfect workplace would take your expertise as a gift and ask you to deliver it.
We all know this doesn’t happen all the time. You wan’t to gain control? Make yourself a freelancer and learn to say no. Most companies cut you off from direct customer relationship. You feel deprived from your right to speack and explain your work. Offer yourself a treat take up some freelance work. But not anything at any price. Learn to sell yourself your real price. take the time for each client and explain, teach, and sometimes, say no for valuable reasons. Take control. It won’t change your daily job, but will make you more in power. Plus, you’ll see if you’re really the expert you tell everyone your are.

MY CLIENTS SUCKS

We all complain about the lack of quality in our portfolios. Clients that add stupid elements to a layout that was once awesome. Sucky graphics  you have to put into that layout. Crappy subjects that can’t urn out well, ever. Bigger logos and partneships that make syou whole work look cheap.  What’s worse for a designer than looking back at his protfolio and feel like he hasn’t accomplish anything but sold his soul to the devil ?

In an utopian world, the perfect workplace would have only top-notch clients, glamourous ideas, awesome R&D, and as much creative freedom as you might dream of.
Be your first and best client then. Design stuff for people you know, people you don’t know, you, and anything you can find. But do it the greatest way around. Again, taking a side freelance job is  a great way to play with your creativity. Negociate your rate in term of creative freedom. You let me do whatever I want? I’ll be cheaper then. You’re starting to ask for a blue logo with comic sans? Let’s renegociate. Of course this is no business plan if you ever intend to grow a real studio. But if you already lower your standards at work, then try not to do it when you’re by yourself. Maybe it’ll make the client angry, or maybe you’ll just deliver your greatest work ever.
Oh, and personal work. Things that really appeal to you. It won’t make your portfolio suddenly awesome, but you’ll have some nice stuff to show in the end. And maybe a few extra bucks in your pocket.

PERFECT IS DULL ANYWAY

If you’re not currently working in the “perfect place”, that you still have to do all-nighters to keep up with the workflow, you hate your coworkers, and the project you do are so crappy you wouldn’t even show them to your mom… Well, maybe it’s time to ask yourself the good questions. What would make it better? Would it be better somewhere else? Can you do anything to change it? Are you just bored and need to push yourself a little further? You’re never stuck anywhere, you can always move forward to find new exciting things to do. And maybe once you’re old enough to create you own workplace, it’ll be perfect. And maybe not. You just oughta try.

Just like slow food, slow life or slow parenting, a trend might emerge in design, and might praises the benefits of getting things done slower. I encountered the “slow life” movement two years ago in Italy, when the love for the “dolce vita” might have inspired some people to get “slower”. No need to say that life around our over-connected societies is nothing but a fast-food chain for everything. Deadlines, clocks, real-time social medias: our day is filled with time pressure. But that might ruin your creativity in the long term…

DOING FASTER IS NOT NECESSARILY DOING BETTER

As a matter of fact, the contrary is true most of the time. Graphic design in a mind process, and more than the technical time needed to accomplish a task, it’s the thinking you’ll need the most. Being head first in a project for a short period of time doesn’t help you seeing flaws in a design. You don’t have time to refine the details, or worse, to explore new paths as they come along your thinking forks.

Forcing designers to work too fast on a complicated project, as identity work or complex layout design, is a waste of time for both clients and designer. It ensures frustration and low quality work most of the time..

LETTING THINGS SIT MIGHT BOOST YOUR CONFIDENCE

When you’re not entirely satisfied with a design, having some time to put it aside and come back later gives you a fresh vision of your work. Structure and contrasts become clearer, and soon enough, you might be able to produce some high ranking work. Which might not have been possible if you forced your way around it in order to finish quickly. Result: less frustration, a fresh view, and a free ego boost when you finally come up with something completely finished and polished.

NOT SHOWING A WORK AT FIRST MIGHT GIVE SOME RESULT

Trust your own design process and take some time to design for yourself, and yourself only. Showing everything you do at earlier stage can ruin a design. Not that an extra pair of eyes is not useful at time, but being given advices too early might make you doubt about your creative choices. People can’t have the exact same vision as you have. The final product might be better than they  expected it to be in the first stages: trust your instincts, and keep some work under cover from time to time.

WORKING SLOWER DOESN’T MEAN NOT WORKING EFFICIENTLY

It’s not because you’re allowing time for the creative process that you’re discarding everything from deadlines to productivity. It’s just like praising quality over quantity: know your pace, allow for having multiple yet interesting projects at the time, but especially take care about your methodology. We don’t talk about procrastination here, but about researches and process.

Of course, all those pieces of advices have small to no chances to reach a standard workplace. As much as banishing workaholics, having a 4-day week or washing away long and inneficients meeting for that matter.  It’s all about stopping to think about the design industry as a business, but about a real craft.
Don’t get me wrong here — I ain’t no utopist: during my day job, having a whole week to design a website layout (clients corrections included) is pure luxury — I know it’s not something we’ll reach by tommorow. But when working on my own, I’m definitely slowing it down, enjoying every single minute of it. and I hope you too, sometimes, do the same.

Saw this quite a log time ago, yet it still makes me laugh…
Via usedwigs