Dear Gunnar,
Thanks for your message.
The term 'usefulness' was intended to imply nothing more than seeing 'design
fields' and everything to do with them as 'tools' created by humans to be
used. Ditto the comment about changing the subject lines retrospectively.
Might not have been the best subject line or the greatest question but
nothing more was intended than the obvious.
In fact, in general, I try to write 'with a straight bat' in the sense that
my perspective is rationalist, post-positivist and prefers reasoning and
logic rather than associative thinking and rhetoric. Any subtle rhetoric
effects in my writing are unintended. In contrast to Ken's position,
however, I expect reasoning to be solid and referencing to others work
being limited, and especially not used in terms of status building. As this
is a discussion of 'experts', I feel it's also reasonable to assume everyone
has read a lot across many fields and can find stuff when necessary.
On the issue of 'design creativity' I'm presuming that means creating
designs, and that it can be done by individuals, groups, processes,
software or anything that results in the instructions (the design) to say
print a poster, or weave a carpet, make a million iPads, build a building,
or make changes to an organisation. Again, the meaning is very 'straight
bat'.
On the issue of ' a better way of thinking about design activity, practice,
research and education', I guess it depends where you stand. I'm thinking
towards 5, 10, and 30 year timelines and finding it difficult to see how
existing ways of thinking about design (in the Art and Design sense) will
work well in the future. The three major transitions I suggest will have
the greatest effects are: automation of existing designer roles, increased
levels of participation of females in advanced education worldwide, and
significant transition of the primary role of universities from knowledge
production to holding institutions to reduce youth unemployment. This is a
different picture than if one sees 'better design activity, practice and
education' in terms of the thinking about design that has been around for
the last century or the 'design thinking' that has been fashionable for the
last 30 years or so.
My apologies for my delay in finding the source of the data for the
reference that only 4% of design graduates have full time jobs as designers
in the design industry after graduation. I remember it came from data from
the UK Design Council surveys of the status of design in Britain. A problem
in exactly locating this as that these Design Council report present
partial data to put things in the most favourable light. This means one has
to find and take bits of their data from different parts of different
reports and integrate it with other data to get a more comprehensive
picture, especially where it reveals something less positive. This is quite
a bit of work to rebuild something worked out over a decade ago. Yesterday,
I spent a couple of hours downloading the Design Council surveys from
around that time and I'm still working on it.
In the meantime, in parallel, I found data from the UK Higher Education
Careers Services Unit and the UK 'official' graduate careers 'Prospects'
website, that when taken together point in a similar direction.
First, it's important to distinguish between:
1. Proportion of art and design graduate who gain employment following their
degree
2. Proportions of them that are design graduates (as distinct from Art and
other graduates) who are employed after their degree are full time and part
time
3. Proportions of the above that are working in design-related work
4. Proportions of the above that are working in the design industry
5. Proportions of the above that are working as designers rather than any
particular design-related role such as pre-flight checking
6. Proportions of the above that are working as designers in the (Art and
Design) design industry as opposed to any other field
7. Proportions of the above that are working full-time as designers in the
(Art and Design) design industry as opposed to any other field
For a starting point, only 67.7% of Art and Design graduates get jobs of any
sort (http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/current_projects_what_do_graduates_do.htm ). Of
them 38.8% work in 'Arts, Design, culture and sport' in any role full-time
and part-time. That is, only 26.3% of Art and Design students work in any
role (designer or otherwise) full-time or part-time in any of 'Art, Design,
Culture and Sport'. (AAAA)
P54 of http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/assets/assets/documents/WDGD_2008.pdf gives a
breakdown by generic role but uses 'designer' to refer to all aspects of the
role, which contradicts other writing that suggests that when design
students commence work they typically do so through internships in which
they primarily are in a design support role rather than being designers.
Art, design and media professionals comprised 5.5% of the total of
employment of graduates from any subject in the UK in 2012
(http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/assets/assets/documents/WDGD_Sept_2013.pdf )
1n 2012, 37% of Design graduates reported that they worked in some capacity
in design-related roles full or part-time and 77.4% were in employment of
any type (P37
http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/assets/assets/documents/WDGD_Sept_2013.pdf )
The spread between full time and part time for Design graduates as a whole
was 53% to 22.4%. That is the ration of full-time to art time was 70%:30%.
(p39 http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/assets/assets/documents/WDGD_Sept_2013.pdf )
The proportion of the total of design graduates employed as 'Art, Design or
Media professionals of any sort) to those employed in any way is 37.6% (p39
http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/assets/assets/documents/WDGD_Sept_2013.pdf )
Therefore, the proportion of design graduates employed full time as 'Art,
Design and Media professionals (in any industry)' is 70% x 37.6% = 26.2%
The challenge is to identify:
1. The relative proportions of those in 'Art', 'Design' and 'Media'
2. Of those in 'Design', the proportion in the 'Design industry' as distinct
from working in Design in other industries. For example, I came across an
earlier report from the Design Council that I can't identify for the
moment, that over half of graduates undertaking Design of the Art and Design
type, are employed by government agencies rather than in the design industry
per se.
3. The proportion of those working in the Design Industry who are working
as designers rather than in other design-related roles
The figures p37-39 of
http://www.hecsu.ac.uk/assets/assets/documents/WDGD_Sept_2013.pdf suggest
that Design provides much larger proportions of students and participation
than Art and Media. Speculatively assume say Design comprises 80% of 'Art,
Design and Media'
For the purpose of rough calculation, assume proportions of design
graduates employed in design work in the design industry versus government
agencies is 50:50.
From experience, the ratio of those working as full-time designers to those
whose roles are tasks supporting the design process is around 4:1 . Your
mileage may differ?
Taken together with the above, the calculation suggests the proportion of
design graduates working full-time as designers in the design industry is
(26.3 x 0.8 x 0.5 x0.25)% = 2.6% of design graduates
Bearing in mind the lack of accuracy in the last stages, this is somewhere
in the same ball court as the earlier calculation of 4% of design graduates.
Note this also aligns with the data at AAAA in relation to design graduates
employed in 'Art, Design, Culture and Sport'. It offers a refinement of the
more general statistic that 77% of design graduates each year get jobs of
any sort in any field.
The above statistics, together with the evidence that relatively high
proportions of Art, Design and Media graduates are employed only via being
'self-employed' suggest that at the same time as a high demand from
students to study of Design, there is a significant oversupply of Design
graduates. This problem is cumulative. If say out of 10,000 design
graduates in any year there are 9,600 who are left still trying to find a
job as a designer, then the next year there are 19,200 in that position, the
next year 28,800 etc. This may be sustainable but it's not obvious that it
will not result in some backlash against universities and design education
at some point. I suggest the introduction of MOOCs (which I think is
great!) is likely to increase these underlying tensions in the design
education/employment system.
Best wishes ,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Honorary Fellow
IEED, Management School
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
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--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gunnar Swanson
Sent: Saturday, 21 December 2013 9:00 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design; Terry Love
Subject: Re: Usefulness of design fields now and in the future
Terry,
On Dec 20, 2013, at 10:25 PM, "Terence Love" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I've changed the subject line to reflect the change in direction of
> this thread (it would be useful if we could go back and change earlier
> items when it later becomes clear something is a new thread - Keith??)
You do understand that "usefulness/useful" here and in the subject line are
rhetorically charged rather than objective facts? (I would have assumed
purposefully so but sometimes I have trouble reading your intent.)
> The 4% employment was a figure from the UK Design Council's research
[snip]
> and only 14% employed in 'some' role in the design industry.
Vaguely remembered stats from some place at some time arrived at by some
specific (yet not known to us) collection techniques. . . Is this a
reflection of the mathematical thinking you lionize? You have been "quoting"
these figures for years and I have challenged them repeatedly but you still
insist on their validity despite your not remembering anything other than
unmoored figures.
> Lower bounds simply means that although we don't know much about the
> ranges of relative sizes of groups of individuals in particular
> subfields, we have at least a starting point in knowing that the
> smallest sub-field is at least
> 50 persons. It's not much, but it's a start when we don't know much at
all!
According to this logic, if we have two categories--football and ice
sports--then we can determine the relative importance of ice sports because
there is curling, ice dancing, ice fishing, pairs figure skating, solo
figure skating, short track speed skating, long track speed skating, hockey,
arguing about whether ice in a gin & tonic is a crime against culture, and
more (each with at least 50 fans) while football is just the three sports?
> As I said in the last post and at other times, the figures are very loose.
> We can see only the biggest trends,
Whether we can or can't see them, it is clear that you are asserting these
supposed trends as facts but doing nothing to let the rest of us see these
trends.
> If you have a better way of classifying design fields into groups that
> don't have overlap between them I'd love to hear it and try it out.
You clearly have a purpose in your classification choices so asking for "a
better way" is another piece of rhetorical dishonesty.
> the shift towards design creativity being more and more undertaken by
> computers it suggests we need a better way of thinking about design
> activity, practice, research and education.
Sorry. I don't have the time to unpack this right now but I can't let it
stand without at least noting that it is a highly problematic statement. I'm
not sure what any individual means by the phrase "design creativity," much
less what you are claiming in your use of the phrase.
We agree on the need for "a better way of thinking about design activity,
practice, research and education" but from past comments you've made, I
suspect that we would not agree on what that might include.
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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