“Coping with the problems relating to the understanding of design in business, depends a great deal on how well informed, genuinely interested, and experienced a businessman is. Managers responsible for design are chosen, not for their aesthetic judgments, nor for their impeccable taste, but for their administrative skills. Few, if any, understand the intricacies of design, or even the role, beyond the obvious, that design and designers play.
Most see the designer as a set of hands — a supplier — not as a strategic part of a business. Their background is primarily that of marketers, purchasing agents, or advertising specialists, not of connoisseurs of design. It is their uninformed, unfocused preferences or prejudices, their likes or dislikes that too often determine the look of things. Yet, much of the time, they are not even discriminating enough to distinguish between good and bad, between trendy and original, nor can they always recognize talent or specialized skills. In the field of design theirs is the dichotomy of being privileged but not necessarily being qualified — after all, design is not their business.
Bureaucrats largely responsible for the administration of design spend endless hours at meetings allegedly about design, in which miscellaneous subjects are discussed; and in which marketing, production, and administration problems are treated as if they were design problems. Whether or not the participants really understand the nature of the problems, or the implication of design, is questionable. If quality, for example, is the subject for discussion, it is dealt with only as an abstraction, with participants assuming the other person understands what is being discussed, when, in fact, nobody can be sure. Since perception is so intimately a part of taste and design, it is the experienced designer who might possibly point the way to meaningful solutions, and smooth the path for an administrator’s needs.
Even though there are comparatively few experienced and really innovative designers around, there are regrettably, even fewer administrators who are receptive to innovative work.”
Read the complete essay, Originally published in the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, Volume 10, Number 1, 1992, Confusion and Chaos: The Seduction of Contemporary Graphic Design, here.
Coping with the problems relating to the understanding of design in business, depends a great deal on how well informed, genuinely interested, and experienced a businessman is. Managers responsible for design are chosen, not for their aesthetic judgments, nor for their impeccable taste, but for their administrative skills. Few, if any, understand the intricacies of design, or even the role, beyond the obvious, that design and designers play.
Most see the designer as a set of hands — a supplier — not as a strategic part of a business. Their background is primarily that of marketers, purchasing agents, or advertising specialists, not of connoisseurs of design. It is their uninformed, unfocused preferences or prejudices, their likes or dislikes that too often determine the look of things. Yet, much of the time, they are not even discriminating enough to distinguish between good and bad, between trendy and original, nor can they always recognize talent or specialized skills. In the field of design theirs is the dichotomy of being privileged but not necessarily being qualified — after all, design is not their business.
Bureaucrats largely responsible for the administration of design spend endless hours at meetings allegedly about design, in which miscellaneous subjects are discussed; and in which marketing, production, and administration problems are treated as if they were design problems. Whether or not the participants really understand the nature of the problems, or the implication of design, is questionable. If quality, for example, is the subject for discussion, it is dealt with only as an abstraction, with participants assuming the other person understands what is being discussed, when, in fact, nobody can be sure. Since perception is so intimately a part of taste and design, it is the experienced designer who might possibly point the way to meaningful solutions, and smooth the path for an administrator’s needs.
Even though there are comparatively few experienced and really innovative designers around, there are regrettably, even fewer administrators who are receptive to innovative work.
Love You <3
Great work from 
