Profiling the designer: how are the design professions perceived?

This paper describes research conducted in Australia and Korea. Mainly, it draws upon the first large-scale investigation into the design professions. This investigation was conducted in three stages, involving an occupational prestige survey, a series of focus groups, leading to an extensive questionnaire survey that was distributed throughout Australia. Three groups completed the questionnaire: designers who were members of the Design Institute of Australia, design educators in universities and colleges, and members of the public. In total, 1600 people participated in the research. While the research was conducted in one country, Australia, it is unlikely that the results cannot be generalised to other similar cultures. A feature of research within this paradigm is the high level of Western intercultural agreement. The paper addresses three distinct strands from the research. First, it examines the perceived levels of social standing of five design professions (graphic designer, interior designer, fashion designer, industrial designer, furniture designer). This includes their perceived levels of education and income, usefulness as professions, and levels of responsibility. In this, comparisons are made with results from Korea. Secondly, it addresses individual questions pertaining to the characteristics of design and the designer as perceived by the public, design educators and designers. These include questions pertaining to: • The Nature-Nurture Controversy: Are Designers Naturally Creative or is it a Learnt Skill? • Are Tertiary Qualifications needed to be a Designer? • Is Design an Occupation for the Very Intelligent? • The Art-Design Controversy: Are Art and Design Two Distinct Occupations? Are Art and Design Synonymous? • What do Designers do? Finally, based on the above a psychological profile is constructed of the design professions as perceived by the public (and it should be borne in mind that the ‘public’ consists of all those outside design, including industry, government and funding bodies). Within this psychological profile, design and designers are regarded as constructs – or categories – within the minds of others. Such constructs compete for meaning with other similar constructs, and in the case of designers they compete with the proximate constructs that people have for artist and architect. The profile that emerges positions designer as an impoverished cognitive category between the well-structured and coherent categories of artist and architect. There is little public understanding of what designers do, and what exists is superficial. Furthermore, designers are not all equal. To the public, fashion design, graphic design and interior design at least exist as constructs; in other words, the public have some idea of these professions. Industrial design, however, does not exist as a design construct: it is completely lacking in categorical identity. Furniture design does exist as a construct, but not necessarily as a design construct. Rather, it exists as a ‘woodworker-joinery’ construct, with furniture designers as skilled workers. In terms of professional standing, design emerges as an occupation rather than a profession – unlike Korea, where design has a higher standing. A number of implications are drawn from the above for the profiling and positioning of the designer.