Over a career spanning 15 years Michael Bierut has become a guru on graphic design with a reputation for being able to take on pretty much anything. His clients have included Citibank, the New York Museum of Sex, the New York Jets and Interiors Magazine as well as a long list of non-profit organisations. Michael has acquired a reputation as the sort of designer that can approach any subject, any situation and any client and come up with exactly what is required every time.
But how did he get there? Was it all down to talent or did training play a part too? It was a key question for an event staged as part of a Design Council campaign looking for ways to broaden design education. His formal design training, gained at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, gave him the craft skills he needed but little else, he explains. 'I learned how to mix stuff and cut stuff out but success isn't really to do with craft - it's to do with engagement with the client. Designers succeed by helping clients succeed. They're people who can synthesise elements of culture.'
But it's difficult to incorporate this into formal education, says Michael. Much of it is still down to natural ability. 'There's a dirty secret: that much of it is a God-given talent. As an instructor of design I come across students that don't need help and others who can't be helped. It's an accident that kicks in at conception.'
No matter how hard it is to make a designer out of nothing, design education is still not giving those who do have ability a head start in developing the right skills, says Bierut. Schools and colleges are doing designers a disservice by treating design as a solo occupation, rather than the collaborative effort it actually is. 'The design process is very underplayed in school,' says Michael. 'We're made to think it's an individual achievement as it is with fine art. Design is different because it brings in people from other disciplines who are all considering the needs of the audience. When you have bad design it's because it's done in isolation and without considering the user.'
Michael believes that designers impose order on a situation by guiding creativity down a set path, but a designer also has to be a unique individual who can step outside of that imposed order. 'If I wrote down the true story of how a design happens it would scare the client,' Michael explains. 'Every design process has moments that depend on chance. When I think about my successes and how they could be replicated I realise that you just have to be ready to be lucky. We train lots of designers, far more than are now working in design. The harshness and randomness of it beats people down.'
Designers have to be the sort of people that can deal with the unexpected but, at the same time, they have to be expert managers who can deal with clients that don't always know what they want. 'I've worked with every kind of client from the extremely qualified to those who know absolutely nothing,' says Michael. 'The best kind of client is the one who knows nothing and knows they know nothing and will trust you to get on with it. The worst kind is the extremely qualified client and competent manager who nevertheless knows little about the subject.'
This is why designers have to become expert communicators who can speak the same language as their clients. 'It's like a wine list,' says Michael. 'If you're a connoisseur you'll know the names of the wines and the vintage and what it means, but most people aren't. Your role is to help them through the process of insecurity. They are untrained. The design part is easy. I didn't improve at design past the age of 21. Where I've grown is in being able to sit patiently with people.'
Despite these skills, designers still aren't trusted to manage themselves. It's still a fact that designers are managed by non-designers, something that wouldn't happen in any profession apart from design, Michael believes, and something designers need to work hard to change. 'We should define design management as part of design no matter who's doing it. The client experiences I've felt most satisfied with are those where I've felt we could almost trade shares. They had faith in me and I had faith in them. I could work in their company and they could work in mine. You wouldn't expect a doctor to have a medical manager. They do the preliminary work and the follow-up work themselves. Designers yearn for that. But they need to do more to deserve it. They need to do their research.'