me designer

We all want superstars, supermodels – or an ‘idol’!

Millions of TV viewers are following seemingly ordinary people in their battle against competition and aim to shine in the limelight – and with that to gain fame and fortune! It seems to be irrelevant what these people actually do; they just have to convince ‘the jury’ with features others don’t have: if you’re not the prettiest, then be the ugliest; if you can’t sing like Pavarotti, why not name the cat food brand by sniffing at your kitties’ poo? To be at the top of the ladder, it’s essential to be unique and deliver uniqueness; it doesn’t matter if the uniqueness doesn‘t add to anything; it just has to add to yourself.

This phenomenon we all know from our school days, when it was so important to climb the ladder to be on top, to deliver unique results, and get top grades, because we all needed to become superstars! That’s why schools and higher education have their pupils focus on achieving better grades through self-centered learning. This kind of learning is related only to the individual, who should deliver the result himself and, in doing so, create intellectual ownership over what is accomplished. And all this should cumulate into being the best! (And if the individual achievement was not sufficient, well, you quickly borrowed from someone else – you just had to avoid being caught.)

What was originally introduced as a (well-meant) pedagogic practice to make pupils learn and deliver results independently has turned many generations into self-focused elbow-fighters (or cheaters). Maybe you recall those schoolmates, who were so anxious to follow-up on the instruction to work in solitude: they would build-up a wall of books and pencil-cases around their exercise books, and additionally, they would cover it all up by leaning forward and putting their arm around it, in order to write down their work, so that nobody could take a glimpse – someone could steal their idea! The main reason wasn’t to protect their work from copy-cats, but the true reason was to get ahead of the competition: in the end, it’s all about the award the winner gets, and that award you want to have for yourself!

It seems you can find this behavior among many creatives and designers as well, since they live off the uniqueness of their work and the ‘intellectual property’ attached to it. What used to be small pencil-cases, now are full-blown portfolio books, in which the unique ideas and work-pieces are protected from copying until they are released at the right moment and place: like on the ‘catwalk’ at designer fairs, or on related websites, as well as at the interviews for those few jobs, which are still out there – because also the business is looking for the superstar, the super- designer!
And that’s why, soon, all designers could be freelancers, so they can present their design superpowers from project to project to become the jury’s favorite. What remains is the hope to be ‘scouted’ by a headhunter, or a generous manufacturer… in order to become the ‘superstar’ at last.
Some companies exploit this phenomenon and deliberately stoke competition between agencies and freelancers so that the best might win. If truly the best gets done, it is an open question.

It gets even trickier when not the best design, but the best product needs to be developed: you can communicate great designs, but you can only sell products. And these are part of the services that are delivered through people in a collective manner. In here lies the true challenge for many companies, in which many functions are held by interim personnel who hardly know each other, or may not want to know, because they compete with each other. The result of this is commonly known: alienation, anonymity, short-term and egoistic thinking, which, in the end, all lead to impersonal and distant experiences towards customers.
But this is exactly what customers are fed up with, and that is why it is no coincidence that we all abandon those banks, telcos, and drug stores en masse. But we also abandon politics and society as a whole…

Is this sustainable? Can we meet the challenges of the future, which require developing better solutions for our society and economy? Is it a model, where one serves oneself alone, the one that will bring us these solutions? You know the answer yourself, and most likely you already act accordingly: we need new and different models and approaches to break through egoism and to create those incentives that make us focus on common goals. And that’s why it is so good to see that increasingly those companies prevail, who follow up on this: for instance here in Germany, where drugstore chain dm (initially laughed at, because it made its trainees take theatre lessons, to learn to play together) is now taking over from competitor Schlecker (known for its cost-down, rational business ethics) by delivering on an authentic and human-centred company philosophy and with that, obviously hitting the nail on the head.

Also, a lot is happening in (higher)education, where there is an increased focus on collective learning, workshops, and interdisciplinary activities.
One way to break through egoism – and, with that, to have design students first focus on others and then on themselves – would be to grade the entire class according to the motto “cling together, swing together”. The learning effect would certainly be different if students needed to support each other to collectively become better, rather than to sustain themselves individually. Completely forgotten and underdeveloped competencies would be demanded and brought to the surface; those who are desperately needed in a future job, where the mantra should be to address issues together.

Because in the future, neither the Avengers nor designer superstars will save our economy, but many well-designed propositions whose aim is to deliver meaningful experiences can only be done through people who bring the matching competencies.

For that, we don’t need me-designers, we need we-designers!