Economies of Design

Guy Julier, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781473918863, 9781473918856
• eBook ISBN: 9781526421302
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

How are the rise of design and neoliberalism connected? How does design change the way we operate as economic beings? What is the economic significance of design?

Historically, design has been promoted for its for its capacity to add value to products and services. In contemporary capitalism, however, it assumes a more central and more complex role. Design today is both influenced by, and actively shapes, our economic systems.

This ground-breaking book shines a spotlight on how design has become embedded in political economies. It reveals the multiple ways in which design has emerged as a vital feature of neoliberal economic systems, from urban strategies to commercial processes to government policy-making. Drawing on a range of global examples, Guy Julier: 

• explains the economic processes of design
• explores the relationship between design and intellectual property
• discusses the role of design in the public sector
• highlights the impact of design in informal and alternative economies
• brings theory to life with case studies on home improvements, fast fashion, shopping centres and more.

Economies of Design provides a thought-provoking new way of understanding and talking about the meanings of design in contemporary capitalism. It is an essential companion for students of design and the creative industries across the arts, humanities and social sciences.

1 Introduction: Contemporary Capitalism and the Rise of Design

Since the 1980s there has been extraordinary growth and visibility of design throughout most of the world. This is connected to fundamental developments in capitalism. This period may otherwise be termed ‘neoliberalism’. Chapter 1 explains some of the ways by which the rise of design and neoliberalism are connected. In particular, it shows how neoliberalism is played out in multiple ways and, relatedly, how design is varied in its practices and outcomes. The reach and complexity of design objects has also extended in the era of neoliberalism and some of this chapter considers the new kinds of artefacts that have emerged. The overall approach of this book and its chapters are also explained.

Economics and design have never been particularly good bedfellows. One suggests certainties and statistics or, at least, attempts to get a clear understanding of what is going on in the big picture of world events or the smaller one of firms and individuals. The other proposes sensations and aesthetics, opening up myriad ways of doing things, of living, of functioning in the world. One tries to demonstrate the knowable, the other is constantly pushing towards the unknowable. Putting these together creates a seemingly impossible nexus.

This book is concerned with the various economies in contemporary capitalism that make design and the ways by which design contributes to the making of economies. In so doing, it seeks the complex and varied meeting grounds of these two fields. Some interrogation of their terms and conditions may help to set the scene.

‘The economy’ (singular) is a construct. It is an idea that is made up to fit a dominant way of organising the economy of a location – usually emanating from the respective politicians who are in power. ‘The economy is … booming/in need of stimulation/needs a lower taxation regime and public spending cuts’ are all declarations that express political and spatial interests. ‘The economy’ means various things. But in its reduction to a singular entity it comes to express an homogenised view of financial and commercial arrangements that conforms to, basically, how politicians and those who agree with them see that they should be run. It then becomes unchallengeable, unalterable, immutable it seems.

Design, meanwhile, is also presented as a singular idea. Although less talked about than ‘the economy’, design is frequently presented as if it were a coherent whole (e.g. Nelson and Stolterman 2003; Cross 2006; Heskett 2008; Verganti 2013). It is common for headline speakers at design conferences to claim that ‘Design is …’ followed by a few sentences of unerring certainty that place this pursuit fairly and squarely into a particular worldview which itself is not actually declared but lurks beneath the surface.

As a starting point for this book, here is my definition of design.

Design is far too variegated in its practices, far too widely deployed and far too diverse in how it is understood and used for us to be able to express a singular definition for it. Instead, we have to take into account the different temporalities and territories that it operates in. We have to understand its various and, sometimes, conflicting purposes. We must recognise the many formats it appears in and the conjunctions of objects within these and between them. No object is an island. No one definition of design is enough.

Economies (plural) sit in, overlap with and operate outside that construct of ‘the economy’. Inside ‘the economy’, there are activities that usually do their best to thrive within the legal structures that are set by it. They make their money, pay their taxes, calculate their loss and profit and find ways to operate formally and informally without breaking the rules or messing up. Sometimes grey areas are sought, though. This is where spaces open up to do something; that is, it takes advantage of the structures of ‘the economy’ while also doing something counter to or alternative from its overarching aims. And then there is wilful distancing from them.

Thus, to talk of ‘economies of design’ is to pursue the different contexts and processes where design functions and investigate the different ways it does this. At times, these may become ‘design economies’. In this change of emphasis, we find design to be more clearly and self-consciously central to activities – where design is the driving force of the way that a context is organised. It is where design is a project in itself that garners various motivations, interests or forms of investment.

The historical parameters for this book are built around two related factors. One is an understanding of the priorities and impacts of neoliberal economic practices from the 1980s. The other is the growth of the multiple ways that design practices have grown, accumulated and intensified through the same period. Putting these together, I would argue, has received little attention in design history, design studies or elsewhere. It necessitates an analysis of the economic processes that take place within design practices, those around it and how each of these interact.

Broadly speaking, design works in two ways in relation to neoliberalism. First, it makes stuff that is used within its systems. Products are fashioned for sale, environments are configured for use, images are formed for viewing, services are designed and rolled out and so on. These form part of the neoliberal pressures of marketisation and differentiation. Second, design also plays a more symbolic role. As a thing that is intended to be at the leading-edge of cultural production, it points towards the possible. It shows what it is in potentia. It materialises the probable. Design plays a semiotic role in making change appear reasonable.

To briefly expand on this secondary, semiotic, role of design, the signalling of transformation may be carried out in various ways. This symbolism produces subjectivities that are disposed to particular economic processes and logics (Jessop 2004). Getting excited about a new design also infers getting excited about economic transformation. In the public sphere, for example, a new urban design scheme works as part of a neighbourhood regeneration scheme in order to tidy streets up. It also shows to property investors or companies looking to re-locate that this area is ‘on the up’ and worth considering. The academic specialism of cultural political economy provides some theoretical starting points for thinking here (Best and Paterson 2010; Sum and Jessop 2013). We can take political economy to involve the relationship of politics, economics and law. This might include the study of such things as civic resource allocation, legal frameworks, trade agreements or taxation systems. Cultural political economy is more concerned with the meanings that are formed through policy and business and how and for whom these meanings function. How design works to get us used to certain economic processes and ambitions is a question at stake here.

This process of habituation to ways by which contemporary capitalism functions may work in quieter ways as well. Artefacts come into use and become part of routines. In this, they may seem very ordinary – their apparent significance may fade a little. Nonetheless, through repeated contact and use the meanings of things go deeper, are performed, get re-enacted and embodied. Thrift (2008: 187) goes further to describes this within a processes of microbiopolitics – small-scale actions that are undertaken in tiny slices of time but which are, nonetheless, sensed and that connect to a broader disciplining of the self (Foucault 2008). Thus it is important to think about the influences of design objects at various levels, from the bigger narratives to intimate actions in everyday life.

The next section considers the ways by which design has developed in this neoliberal age, drawing further attention to its diversity and its porosity in relation to other practices. There follows a section in which I describe some of the overarching qualities of neoliberalism, again opening up its unevenness, its hybridity and functionings. Neoliberalism is seen more as a process of change than as an end – hence it is more accurate to talk about neoliberalisation. Further detail is given thereafter where I break down this process into four key components: deregulation, new economy, financialisation and austerity. How design is entwined into these is briefly opened up. Some of the kinds of design objects that I am mostly interested in paying attention to in this book are then pursued further before finishing this chapter with an outline of the succeeding chapters.

The Rise of Design: Quantities and Qualities

Design is on the exponential rise. Copious graphs and tables – such as in Table 1.1 – demonstrate the growth of design around the world over the past three decades. Indeed, the quantifying of design professionals and turnover has become a minor industry in itself. Local and national governments, transnational groups like the European Union and even the United Nations have all taken part in this as well as institutions dedicated to promoting the design profession and consultancies whose job it is to inform business and policy (see Julier 2014: 24–5).

Table 1.1

With this have come debates as to how to identify and quantify what design does. Who and where are the designers? The United Nations has side-stepped this by referring to ‘design intense’ products such as fashionware, souvenirs and toys; they have then looked at global trade statistics to track the growth of exportation of these items, and then concluded that this must mean that there is more design around in the world than ever (UNCTAD 2010). However, this can only deliver a very partial picture as the analysis only refers to product-based design. Where is graphic or interior design here, for instance?

Other problems arise when we quantify design by counting the number and output of professional designers. How do you identify designers? Professional associations provide lists and contacts for researchers to survey, but these will usually only cover their membership. Furthermore, these are often limited by the particular reach of that association. Legions of designers who work in-house for companies or as freelancers are often missed. And in any case, there are constantly emerging design specialisms which are either unknown or overlap with other professional activities so much that it is difficult to disentangle them. A service designer may also be a strategist, a business consultant, a digital technology developer or an ethnographer.

The key point here is that emphasis on quantities in the rise of design often misses fundamental developments in its qualities. It has become an orthodoxy to talk of the growing complexity of design in our ‘complex world’ (e.g. Thackara 2006; Norman 2010). But it is important to not just accept this notion as a given, but to try to unpick what the constituent parts of this ‘complexity’ are. Let us consider what these might be.

First, the growth of design has by no means meant ‘more of the same’. Until the 1980s, its mainstay had been in its sub-sectors of industrial, graphic, fashion and interior design. Since then, as Table 1.2 illustrates, the design profession has constantly atomised into more and more specialisms. Unlike, for example, law or architecture, design has never been subject to normative curricula or any kind of externally certified professional attainment levels. The downside of this has been that, historically, it has always struggled for recognition outside. The upside is that this has meant that design education and the design profession has been able to move swiftly, inventing new sub-sectors and approaches as it goes along.

Table 1.2

Second, and as already intimated, the boundaries between design and other professional disciplines have become ever more porous. This has largely been in response to market and technological changes. In the 1980s, this porosity was driven by commercial considerations, in particular around corporate identity and retail design where increased efforts were made to present a unified design language across visual, material and spatial elements. This was consolidated in the 1990s, in particularly through branding, where in addition to coordinating the physical attributes of a service or product offer, digital presence became increasingly important and greater attention was paid to customer experience; thus issues such as staff training and management styles began to be mixed into the branding equation. The increased overlapping of design disciplines has also been driven by ethical considerations, such as environmental sustainability. Design for sustainability in its early days of the 1970s to the mid-1990s focused principally on material questions such as recyclability (e.g. Papanek 1995). Latterly it has incorporated more complex questions of social arrangements and participation in the design process itself that enhance carbon neutrality (e.g. Manzini 2015).

Third, in its intensification design has become more knowing of itself, more reflexive and more self-conscious in its various ways. Aside from the proliferation of design webzines, blogs and print publishing we must also note the growth of semi-formal gatherings of designers through talks and panel discussions at, for example, trade fairs and design festivals. The fora that are available for the debate of design have grown with it. We must also note the growth of design schools, design research and attendant conference circuits, symposia and peer-reviewed journals.

Fourth, the temporalities within which design operate have become more varied. At one extreme, the processing of design has speeded-up. Not least, this has been facilitated by technological change. Computer systems allow for far more rapid development, negotiation and deployment of designs. It has also been driven by increasing velocities in the global economy as a whole. This is not usual to the whole of design practice, though. At the other extreme, many designers have moved into much longer-term relationships with their clients or users. This means that they might work in more iterative ways, developing successions of designs and projects with them that go deeper in terms of their contact points. Typically in commercial contexts, they may be involved in the design of a wider suite of objects that encompass both the ‘above the line’ features that the public see and ‘below the line’ aspects relevant to the internal workings of the client, such as training manuals or brand guidelines. In more socially oriented design practices, there has been a move to building long-term processes with stakeholders. Here, the designer engages in deep understanding of the make-up of organisations or populations and what constitutes their specific cultures.

Fifth, the territories of design have altered since the 1980s. An obvious example of this has been in growth of design in the former Soviet bloc or in so-called emergent economies such as in East Asia and Latin America. These come with their specificities in terms of their material and technical resources but also in their politics as to the uses of design or in the economic structures within which they operate. Beyond this, we must also consider the transnational, border-crossing that takes place on the one hand, while on the other, movements occurred where a very conscious relocalisation of economies and design has occurred.

Sixth, and to combine points four and five, in many contexts design has taken up a role not just in providing goods and services to satisfy current requirements, but has increasingly functioned to indicate sources of future value. Design is used to leverage value outside itself – to build on other assets and/or to point towards these. Further, many forms of design have become just part of networks that are under continual adjustment and modification. An example of this is in smartphone technologies whose running systems, apps, handsets and signal provider systems are under constant redesign in relation to each other. In this, the objects of design are often ‘unfinished’ while the broader ‘culture of design’ of a location, a design specialism or a corporation, for example, can also be said to be in an ongoing state of becoming. Here, there has been a rise in maintaining or even protecting the ‘territories’ within which design operates through time against the competition. Hence, intellectual property (IP) has taken increased prominence in the discourse...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustration List
• Table List
• Illustration List
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Contemporary Capitalism and the Rise of Design
• 2 Design Culture and the Neoliberal Object
• 3 Design Work
• 4 Global Trade and Mobilities
• 5 Financialisation and Assets
• 6 Intellectual Property
• 7 Informal and Alternative Economies
• 8 Public Sector Innovation
• 9 Studying Economies of Design
• References
• Index