I did a study of sorts in work "The development of Industrial Design Consulting in Australia" 1990.
In planning for new design education some relevant issues are:
*The trend in employment in design in a country. In China it is upwards but in Australia I believe that it is downwards.
The overall employment in manufacturing in an industrialized country typically follows a curved path through industrialization and post industrialization for example in the UK it went from maybe 10% of overall manufacturing in 1770 to 45% in 1950 to around 20% from memory today.
*In the US it went from 15% around 1820 to 33% in 1950 to around 23% today.
*In Korea it is already over the peak going from 35% in 1985 to around 27% today
*In China it is levelling off around 23%
The time intervals for development and transition to post industrail society are getting shorter over time.
In the US decining employment has been the result of increased productivity and there is some evidence to suggest that the industrial base has not been eroded.
The trend in design employment has not been parellel to the overall trend in manufacturing employment.
* In Australia the rate of decline has been faster than the US and UK.
The number of graduates is far greater than can be taken up by industry. I would argue there for a reduction of perhaps 50% in the number of graduates with an increased spending on the smaller number of graduates. I would guess that there are fewere than 350 graduates working in traditional Industrial Design in the country with an annual uptake of probably less than 50 and maybe 12 schools training in ID.
In the UK according to a survey in a recent Newdesign magazine there has been a reduction of around 20% in working designers over the last 2 years.
I think that it would be unwise to start a new ID course in Australia without collecting more accurate figures than currently exist on trends in employment.
India is in a different situation because there are increasing opportunities for graduates there but I still think that academics have an obligation to research projected opportunities before developing new schools of design. I think that the students, the manufacturers and society are better served by concentrating on quality rather than quantity in ID education.
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>>> Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> 09/13/03 10:45 AM >>>
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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