Star System Design

Written by Pere Alvaro on Bis
Feb 2007



There is no denying that we are immersed in the culture of glamour. And our industry is not alien to it: magazines displaying the latest trends, design awards, exclusive festivals, TV programmes trumpeting the talents of the latest new star … these are elements that stoke our own professional bonfire of the vanities.

In our country, we designers have the habit of measuring our professional value by means of what we might call our “visibility,” either in specialised publications (even if they are only of local scope), the most seriously cool TV talent-search shows or this month’s prize-giving ritual. If you’re not seen, you don’t exist.

Fortunately, those of us who have been in this business for a few years know that there is life outside the media. We know that it’s everyday work that produces results, but we won’t deny our need for a certain dose of vanity and the thrill of walking onto a stage now and again.

Without a doubt, ours is an almost anthropological approach, with its roots in our own character. Let’s take a look, for instance, at the USA: who knows Fitch & Pattern Works? Who’s heard of Selvert and Perkins Design or Tollesson Design? They’re all design firms, each with over a hundred employees. Consolidated business projects in which customer relationships are based on the consolidation of the designer’s role through respect and appreciation. And this situation fosters a framework of occupational and business relationships where everyone is accorded their true value. These studios, responsible for large “anonymous” projects that are not subjected to the momentary glare of the media spotlight, have developed their business plan without keeping track of their degree of social acknowledgement. Their day-to-day endeavour has meant that, after years of impeccable dedication, they are suddenly featured in compilation volumes that bring together hundreds of projects carried out throughout their history that are so modern they could have been executed in the last twelve months.

What normally happens in our socio-professional world is that the first thing we seek is media attention. We crave premature consecration. We long to win prizes, to get our name and picture in a press that only serves to position ourselves against the competition, we swagger and preen when we appear on TV like juvenile stars alongside acne-riddled actors or the latest sensation in short fiction. But what lies behind all of this social exaltation? What substance is there beyond the six, eight or ten awards won? – All too often, business structures that maintain themselves by paying their staff apprentices’ wages or forcing them to figure as self-employed workers and pay their own dues … How is it that this social prominence is not accompanied by corporate consolidation? How is it that, having attained success and occupied the pages of the most influential trend-setting magazines, we have not yet managed to set this cachet on the economic and professional plane it warrants? Clearly, something is not working. To use a common expression that says a lot about our culture, we like to start the house by the roof instead of laying some solid foundations. We ought to ask ourselves, for example, what projection all of this song and dance has in the outside world. Why is it that designers who are the toast of the town here, a city that has more design schools than New York, have so little impact abroad? Why is it that, after giving an address at the Laus ’03 awards, Ian Anderson was asked by Alvaro Sobrino if he knew of any Spanish designer, and was unable to mention a single name?

The fact is that all of this particular star system of ours, packed with media celebrities with undisputed professional merit, extends no further (with a few exceptions) than our own local scenario. Behind these promises, as I was saying, there are often business projects that are poorly consolidated in structural terms: there is only talent, energy and the typical hunger for success.

At a recent academic event, as happens every year, a group of students came up to me to ask if I knew the result of the latest edition of the Laus student awards. Their unrest was clear to see. They made no attempt to tell me about their visions, concerns and uncertainties about the professional world that had just opened its doors to them at that graduation ceremony. What most concerned those budding professionals was whether or not they had grabbed the big prize, had shot to stardom in the design world – as if this alone would guarantee them a brilliant future. It would be worthwhile asking colleagues who have won previous editions if this has really been the case. The unfortunate truth is that, aside from nurturing the winner’s ego, this momentary glory will go no further than a few pats on the back at the prize-giving ceremony.

Sincerely, as a professional and as a teacher, I feel that we are failing in something when our students walk out of the classroom looking for media celebrity as the most immediate value. To what purpose, I ask myself? We have the mission of fostering the necessary self-esteem to leave school and survive the first year in the professional “market,” and this involves not only stimulating media attention, which fills us professionals and teachers with pride – it also involves endowing our future professionals with the values, references and tools that will give them the self-sufficiency to make their way in life without needing a prize to do it for them.