Hi Ranjan,
Thank you for your info. I'm working on a bit of research into national design infrastructures that might connect with what you are doing. I think we are asking a similar underlying question - something like ' What are the best ways forward in developing the sort of national design infrastructure necessary for enabling full potential for national economic and social development?'
Its early days yet in my research but it seems there are a number of issues to be addressed before its possible to do a good comparison between national design infrastructure ofr design education data. These include:
* Key national indicators etc ( e.g. is the country's economy based on primary secondary or tertary/ some mix, and what are the internal industry/ wealth creating and consumer profiles)
* National historical profile (Where has the country developed from, how fast and in what ways? )
* Government attitude (What is the country's governance trying to do?)
* National cultural fixations (How do people see the role of design?)
* Exisiting profile of national design infrastructure
* Attitudes of constituents of national design infrastucture and design users
These shape what is appropriate in terms of design infrastructure and design education in many ways. For example, here in Australia the economy is nationally one of resource development with aspirations to become a knowledge economy, but locally in the cities the dominant employment mode is that of service industries. Manufacturing and the design for manufacturing is low. Design activity is completely absent from the national and local government economic and social development models. These models consists only of research (aimed at invention - rather than design) and etrepreneurial activity. There is some indication that this widespread cultural blindness to design and the weakness in the manufacturing sectors appear to be due to the colonial heritage and historic pressures from Great Britain to minimise the risk of Australia competing with the UK. Australia, therefore imports most of its goods. The pressure locally is on selling these goods and this needs advertising. Consequently, the ratios of graphic designers and designers in advertising is high compared to other types of designer. It si also reflected in closer inspection of the curricula and student profiles of design education courses. The City-state nature of Australia and its econmomic foundation in resource sectors means that there is a high demand and good funding for office developments. This is reflected in the relative dominance of interior designers in the Design Institute of Australia. Further, many designers are not called designers and most people trained via design education schools do not become designers in Australia - many never become designers. Another issue is productivity - better techniocal/computer suppot offers significant changes in designers' output. So areas that are technicised need less designers than other areas. These factors impact on identifying the righrt number and type of design education programs for the future. These 'local' Australian characterisitics are very different (say) to the design infrastructure development profile of the UK, the USA, Finland or Korea. From this analysis I frind that simply counting the number of designers, design education institutions and design students doesn't really give a useful picture. I'm happy to share sources etc off list if they are useful.
A request for anyone reading this in Norway. I'm In Oslo in a couple of weeks (30Sept -3Oct) doing interviews and am short of a manager to interview who is working on design industry development for the Norwegian government or civil service. If anyone knows of a suitable contact, please email me!
Best wishes,
Terry
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Dr. Terence Love
Dept of Design
Faculty of BEAD
Curtin University
+61 (0)8 9266 4018
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