Posted by
Carl Alviani | 5 Nov 2009
The numbers are in, and they are both great and terrible. Coroflot's Designer Salary Survey, now in its ninth year (true!), broke the 5000 response barrier this time around, with strong showings from every design field that calls the site home. The findings are a combination of expected and astonishing.
First, the expected:
Salaries took a tumble this year, almost across the board: the Design Management and Interaction Design fields in particular saw their meteoric 3-year rise come to a sharp and dramatic end, though they're still the highest paid among the eight fields covered. Other disciplines saw gentler declines, with the peculiar exception of Fashion and Apparel, which bucked the downward trend in a big way, showing a nearly US$3,000 increase over last year. Fashion also bucked the experience trend, with mid-level designers in the field out-earning their more venerable counterparts:
Graphic and Interior designers continue to languish at the bottom of the pay scale, and those very few web designers who've been at it since the beginning (Mosaic, Hotbot, blinky text...ah the mid-90s) are making an absolute killing.
Here's another noteworthy shift from last year:
Corporate design studios are losing their dominance. While last year's survey showed more than 60% of respondents working in-house in every field but web design, this year flips that around: all but two fields saw the in-house fraction drop below 60%, with the Freelance and Consultancy categories taking up the slack. The temping of design, it appears, accelerates during dark financial days.
This is just scratching the surface though. For lots more analysis, including regional and international comparisons, salaries by job title, and the influence of education on design salaries, plus a customizable database of all Survey results, go to the 2009 Salary Survey Results page on Coroflot. We've broken it down for you into The Six New Realities of Creative Work, and you know you want to read about those.
>>Read the full analysis and see the entire 2009 data set here.
Posted by
core jr | 29 Oct 2009
The second in I.D. Magazine's new series of webcast goes live today at 4:00 pm EST. Presenters Masuma Henry, and Martjin Van Tilburg from Artefact group will discuss the opportunities for and implications of "Designing Products for Emerging Markets."
Here's I.D.'s writeup:
As countries such as India and China continue to grow and become more accessible, they represent expanding opportunities for product development. How can product designers create unique and meaningful user experiences for people in these populations? Masuma Henry and Martijn Van Tilburg of the Seattle-based design consultancy Artefact will explain how to do just this, outlining an effective process for developing compelling products for customers in emerging markets.
Drawing from their experience designing technology experiences for these users, they will dispel common misconceptions and reveal practical insights and methods for undergoing this design process. Specifically, they will explain how to conduct the discovery phase, including the planning and execution of fieldwork, remote data collection, and concept generation in the field. They will also demonstrate how to make sense of fieldwork results and how to choose the most relevant concepts to pursue further. They'll highlight examples of successful and failed products, discuss the reasons for these outcomes, and show examples of their recent work in this exciting space.
The webcast is at 4:00 pm EST TODAY. Registration is $39.99—sign up here.
Posted by
core jr | 26 Oct 2009
The economy's still down, but how far down is it? Are designers weathering the storm with ease and grace, or are they catching the full brunt?
To answer these questions, you need information, and to get that information, The Coroflot Design Salary Survey needs your response. If you haven't responded to the call yet, there's still time, but don't dawdle--the survey closes at 11:59pm, EST on Thursday, October 29.
Now in its ninth incarnation, this is the world's largest and longest-running survey specifically targeted at the creative professions in all their diversity. Whether you're in ID, IxD, Graphic Design, Architecture, Art Direction, or any of the other myriad specialties that hang out on Coroflot, this is the place to let the world know that it pays--or doesn't pay--to be a creative professional. And as always, more responses equals more reliable results, so painting a clear picture of the current state of the profession is in your hands.
Responding is simple, and takes all of 2 minutes. Just click over to Coroflot and fill out the form--it looks like this:
Please remember to give your annual salary (not monthly or weekly), and while readers from all countries are eagerly encouraged to participate, salaries should be converted to US Dollars for comparison purposes. See the Survey page for more details.
>>Heed the call and make your voice heard here.
Posted by
hipstomp | 23 Oct 2009
Indian bureaucracy can be a huge, lumbering machine. Question is, can it churn its wheels in the service of design? The India Design Council (set up under the National Design Policy by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, but separate from the National Design Council and the National Institute of Design--here's our justification for that first sentence) hopes so.
The IDC is pushing forth the idea of an Indian Design Mark, a sort of quality assurance stamp that would be placed on manufactured goods in order to "certify the minimum design intervention for a product."
The mark will assure a certain process that the product's design would have gone through to ensure that not only the quality but also the ingredients and the way of production is design-sensitive," said the director of National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, Pradyuman Vyas, who is also the member secretary of the National Design Council.
To introduce the I' mark, the design council is studying the different design standardisation marks that exist in other countries like Red Dot Award of Germany, The Good Design Award of Japan and Index Award of Denmark.
"This mark also signifies the social relevance of the product where levels of pollution and carbon emission are also taken into consideration," said Vyas, who had recently visited Japan for a function organised by Design Office, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan.
Next step in making it happen? An upcoming December meeting where "the matter will be discussed further."
via times of india
Posted by
Mark Vanderbeeken | 14 Oct 2009
Market Forces is the theme of the fifth edition of Piemonte Share Festival, guest curated by Andy Cameron: which the relation between contemporary culture and market, how new media integrate the artistic languages and the economy, which the convergences between interactive art and advertising?
Piemonte Share Festival will be in Turin, Italy from the 3rd till the 8th of November 2009. Below is an overview of the exhibitions. Information on lectures, conferences and events, as well as a series of interviews, can be found online.
Share Prize Exhibition
Launched in 2007, the Share Prize is the pride and joy of the Festival. Designed to discover, promote and support the digital arts, artists from all around the world take part in the contest every year.
This year, the six finalists short-listed by the international panel of judges are: Ernesto Klar Convergenze parallele | Lia Proximity of needs | Andreas Muxel Connect | Francesco Meneghini-William Bottin Sciame 1 | Ralf Baecker Calculating Space | Random International / Chris O'Shea Audience
4th-8th November, 10 AM-7 PM, Regional Museum of Natural Sciences, Via Giolitti 36, Turin
Squatting Supermarkets
Artist Salvatore Iaconesi aka xDxD.vs.xDxD looks at how our everyday lives have evolved through shopping, piercing into the pulsating heart of Market Forces. Browsing products on shelves, choosing, paying, running up debt, being convinced and seduced, relating to places, messages and other people: shopping is an experience that fills our days, an experience constructed through images, suggestions and strategies that are all so complex that we, as final users, systematically fail to perceive them.
4th-8th November, 10 AM-7 PM, Regional Museum of Natural Sciences, Via Giolitti 36, Turin
Market Forces Exhibition
Taking as its starting point Salvatore Iaconesi's special project for Share Festival 2009, Squatting Supermarkets, which narrates how our everyday lives have evolved through "augmented" shopping, the statement made by the exhibition, curated by Simona Lodi, explores the issue of whether artists can be an alternative source of information on the economy.
4th-8th November, 10 AM-7 PM, Regional Museum of Natural Sciences, Via Giolitti 36, Turin
Until the End of Cinema
Curated by Luca Barbeni, this exhibition screens a series of audio-visual works that begin where the cinema ceases to exist, taking us from the linear to the interactive, from the collective to an individual perspective. The works can no longer be said to be cinema, but nor are they something else.
4th-8th November, 10 AM-7 PM, Regional Museum of Natural Sciences, Via Giolitti 36, Turin
Form Follows Nature - Erik Natzke Exhibition
Erik Natzke, artist, designer and programmer, creates and gives material substance to his ideas through immaterial computer code. His sensibility, combined with his stubborn resolve, has enabled him to push back the limits of his medium, beyond known methods and approaches. Natzke's work focuses on aesthetics and methodology, in which code and numbers generate beauty. When Natzke wants to draw something, he doesn't pick up a pencil. He opens his Flash software editor and starts programming.
7th-14th November - Allegretti Contemporanea Gallery, via San Francesco D'Assisi 14, Turin
Inauguration Saturday 7th November, 7 PM
Posted by
Mark Vanderbeeken | 14 Oct 2009
The results of the European Commission's public consultation on its working document "Design as a driver of user-centred innovation," which provides an analysis of the rationale for making design an integral part of European innovation policy, are now online.
The response was very good. In total, the Commission received 535 online replies - 309 from organisations, 226 from individuals.
91 percent of responding organisations consider that design is very important for the future competitiveness of the EU economy. 96 percent consider that initiatives in support of design should be an integral part of innovation policy in general, 91 percent that initiatives in support of design should be taken at EU level in addition to Member State and regional level.
On this basis, the Commission is now considering its next steps in better integrating design into European innovation policy and support.
For those of you interested in contributing further to EU policy development, the Commission recently launched a similar consultation on the broader question of future innovation policy.
Posted by
Mark Vanderbeeken | 13 Oct 2009
It's 2023. Climate change, oil shortages, and population growth have become pressing issues. What will the tourism industry look--and more importantly, will there even be a tourism industry?
That's the question that Tourism 2023, an initiative from Forum of the Future, is aiming to find out, reports Fast Company.
Tourism 2023 partnered with companies like British Airways, Carnival UK, and Advantage Travel Centres to analyze the impact our ever-growing ecological footprint will have on travel in the UK. The results, presented in four scenarios (Boom and Burst; Divided Disquiet; Price and Privilege; and Carbon Clampdown), are somewhat surprising.
>> Read article
Posted by
Xanthe Matychak | 12 Oct 2009
Among the slew of "Design Thinking Is Magic" hoopla we hear these days, Peter Merholz offers a refreshingly honest little piece in the Harvard Business Review entitled: "Why Design Thinking Won't Save You."
In it he warns business folk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. He proposes that right-brained tactics should be brought in to an organization to enhance left-brained thinking, not replace it.
Design thinking is trotted out as a salve for businesses who need help with innovation. The idea is that the left-brained, MBA-trained, spreadsheet-driven crowd has squeezed all the value they can out of their methods. To fix things, all you need to do is apply some right-brained turtleneck-wearing "creatives," "ideating" tons of concepts and creating new opportunities for value out of whole cloth.
Merholz also claims that Design Thinking is not new but that it is, simply, a new name for sociology and anthropology.
A not-so-secret truth about "design thinking" is that a big chunk of it is actually "social science thinking." Design thinkers talk about being "human-centered" and "empathic," and the tools they use to achieve that are methods borrowed from anthropology and sociology. Believe me, until very recently, they didn't teach customer research at design schools.
He makes many interesting points - each of them surrounded by many interesting counter-arguments. So let us ask you: What distinguishes Design Thinking from other types of social science thinking?
Read the entire piece here
Posted by
hipstomp | 5 Oct 2009
China is "The World's Factory," right?
Actually, no. Surprisingly, the U.S. still leads in that area, producing 22% of the world's goods versus China's 13%. (Also surprising, Japan is not that far behind China, with 11%.)
These facts are taken from Karen E. Klein's BusinessWeek article "Finding a U.S. Manufacturer to Make Your Product Idea," where the writer discusses the importance of prototypes, business plans, consulting a manufacturing engineer, understanding whatever product industry you're targeting, et cetera. A must-read for you designers thinking of "going rogue."
Posted by
core jr | 30 Sep 2009
The winners of The 4th Bin Design Competition are in! Congratulations to the winners and runners up, and be sure to check out more pics and full-on descriptions at the site. To get you started though, here's a quick taste (yup, there were 3 2nd-place winners; judges couldn't make themselves rank 'em!):
BINS
1st Place
"Expand Recycling"
Springtime
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2nd Place Winner
Smart Design
Colin Kelly
Carolina Krupinska
Alistair Bramley
NYC, USA
2nd Place Winner
"e-Bin"
Studio Bagherian
London, UK
2nd Place Winner
"Private E-Waste Bin"
ampm studios
Derry, New Hampshire, USA
LOGOS
1st Place Winner
Two Twelve
New York, New York, USA
2nd Place Winner
Kevin Elliot James
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posted by
Xanthe Matychak | 30 Sep 2009
It's always good practice to note the moment when a cutting-edge design issue makes its way in to a mainstream business magazine. The online, laser-cut-on-demand service, Ponoko.com, is on the cover of Inc. this month.
Here's a taste from the feature:
One day, [David ten Have] believes, perhaps 50 years from now, [laser-cutters] like this will be inexpensive enough to be in every home and will be capable of making almost anything. Buying a physical product - a cell phone, for instance - will be as easy as buying an MP3 on iTunes. Products won't be shipped in containers; they will be downloaded as digital design files and then printed on our desks while we sip our morning coffee. Not only will this be exceedingly convenient, but ten Have says that it will reorder the global economy, green the planet, and unleash an unprecedented wave of creativity as regular people design their own stuff.
Posted by
core jr | 29 Sep 2009
On the occasion of the publication of Tim Brown's book, Change By Design (reviewed here by Robert Blinn), Tim will join Bruce Nussbaum in an evening conversation tomorrow night at The New School. Here's the pitch:
What does the future hold for design and innovation? IDEO's Tim Brown and BusinessWeek's Bruce Nussbaum will tackle this question on September 30 in a free public lecture at The New School. The conversation will range from design's evolution from creator of goods to a creator of systems to IDEO's work applying design solutions to poverty. This event kicks off a series of discussions The New School is organizing this fall around the topic of design and ethnography.
More info at the site.
Posted by
Mark Vanderbeeken | 28 Sep 2009
SEE is a network of eleven European partners sharing knowledge and experience on how design can be integrated into regional and national policies to boost innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability and social and economic development.
Their first bulletin is now online. Make sure to check out their article on the future EU innovation policy which gives an excellent update on what the European Union is doing to stimulate design and user-driven innovation.
Posted by
core jr | 28 Sep 2009
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Comments (0)
Jon Kolko, just back from the IDSA Conference in Miami, has some provocative ideas about the future of industrial design and the IDSA. Here's the start:
I've just returned from the IDSA conference in Miami, and I'm both convinced that, in ten years, there won't be an IDSA conference to go to - and that isn't a bad thing. I don't mean this in a disparaging sense; I enjoyed the conference, caught up with old friends, made new friends, and learned a bit. But a trend that I've observed at past conferences is only more evident this year, and it's patronizing to continue to skirt what is becoming increasingly obvious: the IDSA has served a valuable role in the evolution of design as a professional discipline, and has helped advance the field to a point where the IDSA is now essentially irrelevant. Design has outgrown "Industrial Design", and a professional organization cannot exist only in the form of self-maintenance.
While there are a number of valid points in his article, perhaps his conclusion goes too far, too fast. Certainly there is a greater need for integration with interaction, experience and service design, as virtually every electronic device has a web site or subscription model behind it these days. But to claim that the business of artifact production is so commoditized that every business should simply outsource it to the cheapest provider is doing a disservice to a specialization that has many facets to it.
The need to evolve the definition of industrial design as a profession is real. And programming a high-profile annual event is one of the biggest opportunities to do so. So before the rumors of the death of an organization become too widespread perhaps a more important discussion to have is to how to best do this? What are the topics that should be discussed in a gathering like this? Are these topics being discussed in a more meaningful way elsewhere? If so is there a need to replicate those discussions? Or can the organization bring something new to the table? If so, what is it?
Read Jon's full entry the at frog's DesignMind. Got another take? Comment away.
Posted by
core jr | 21 Sep 2009
Frog's latest issue of designmind, their multimedia publication on business, technology and design, focuses on the TedGlobal conference held in Oxford this past July, on the theme of "The Substance of Things Not Seen." With selected articles online and a print version available to purchase, this issue offers both behind-the-scenes coverage of the acclaimed TedGlobal conference (where frog acted as a content partner) and reflections by frog designers, technologists and strategists on the conference content. For example, in Seeing the Future Synesthetic, Laura Richardson, a principal designer at frog, reflects on Beau Lotto's talk about artificially created synesthesia:
Like TEDGlobal speaker Beau Lotto (see "A New Way to See"), I don't research synesthesia—I prefer to create it artificially. Lotto calls this "virtual synesthesia." I call it "associational synesthesia." While he might want to leverage synesthesia for experimenting with the brain's adaptability, I want to cultivate and harvest it in order to design thinking processes and problem solving skills.
"You can teach people through [synesthetic] experiences to heighten their ability to find new relationships and new associations that haven't been discovered before. That's the creativity," says Lotto.
There's much more where that came from—frog has a wealth of selected articles here, including pieces on musician Imogen Heap, the working homeless, organized crime and micro-sculptures, among others. For even more, get the printed version.
Posted by
core jr | 8 Sep 2009
That's a big title, but Jeremy Zietz's essay up on Continuum's blog is a good thinkpiece with tendrils all over hell and back. My favorite section is the "Disconnection to Manufacturing" of course (with its mention of How It's Made and Manufactured Landscapes), but Handmade Detroit gets a mention as well as a bunch of others. Further along, here's a paragraph we can all get behind:
Being involved in a community of commerce is about personal relationships with the people involved, the stakeholders. Who's behind the process? What motivates them? Strong product development companies and vendors know the value of these connections and spend big on fine-tuned service and sales. Similarly, we still realize the value of that ashtray we made in art class for our parents (smoking or non) and its endless value, a stamp in time. Owning things that are connected to strong relationships is of the highest value. The tighter our list of stakeholders becomes, the more we gain an understanding of the process and invest in our communities. We may see how development systems working on this community scale can more efficiently customize solutions to its needs and promote its own expression. As consumers understand their products more, stakeholder's values of fair trade, worker's rights, and local manufacturing will be heightened.
Posted by
core jr | 1 Sep 2009
A quick heads-up that the new Designers Accord website just launched, with new features, easy links to facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and a "What's your greatest sustainability challenge?" box for you to fill in. (Hoping they add in a "How many adopters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" box!)
Posted by
hipstomp | 1 Sep 2009
The Savannah College of Art and Design has over 9,300 students and 1,500 faculty members, so President/Co-Founder Paula Wallace is in a good position to discuss "the value of a design education," as she does in her guest blog for Fast Company.
In this week's installment she talks with SCAD ID professor Peter Fossick, who has an interesting take on design: It's not so much the product designs themselves, but the services designed around them that can make the difference. In Fossick's own words:
Everything is moving toward service design. Design is becoming more intangible, less about product and more about the experience of the product. Look at Velib, the bicycle rental program in Paris. The technology is ancient--it's a bicycle, after all--but the program is so brilliant thanks to the service architecture. I'm not saying we'll stop inventing new products. I'm just saying that designing the experience of the product is becoming just as fundamental as the product itself.
DUTCH DESIGN WEEK 2009
PRAGUE DESIGN DAYS 2009
LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL 2009
GIZMODO GALLERY 2009
EUROBIKE 2009
MAKER FAIRE AFRICA
NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL GIFT FAIR
ISTANBUL DESIGN WEEKEND 2009
BAUHAUS SUMMER SCHOOL 2009
