As long as we have the cultural mix of this country and we have the tolerance of this country; not many other European countries have the same tolerance as we do in this country, and a multicultural mix, which is fantastic, as long as we continue to have that, I can’t see any reason why they should come away from this country.
I think the UK design industry has quite a challenge ahead of itself. A lot of the reason why UK design, or the approach to design by British designers is so internationally successful is because of the way that designers are taught in this country but as funding from our higher education institutes is decreasing and they are having to increasingly look overseas for international students to come here or to open branches in China and in India, when they are starting to teach those designers our approach to design, so if we’re talking maybe 5-10 years from now, then we’re going to start finding designers that are equally as strategic as what we have at home at the moment and we have quite a big challenge longer term ahead of us in how do we stay ahead of the game and how do we keep the value added and the high end of the fees. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been driving something called the Creative Economy programme over the last year, so it’s not just design that’s in this situation – it’s music, film, television, publishing, it’s all our creative industries. Even on the policy side, everyone is now copying what we’ve done here, even the Design Council. We heard David Kester earlier this evening saying ‘we’re telling the Indians and the Dutch and the Chinese how we do things here’ and I’m going ‘No! Don’t tell them! This is our competitive advantage!’ There’s a lot research going into this at the moment in terms of how we start protecting some of our intellectual property as a country full stop, instead of just giving it all away.
When we talk about the UK, this little island, it is a bit out of date really. We’re a minimal part of the European Union, which is now 450 million people as a region rather than individual countries. And there’s more collaboration going on. So I think is a little bit myopic to talk about the UK context when most of our clients are international clients, most of our projects, even if they are for one particular country will have international implications because they’ll be exported from that market etc, so yes, it is very much a global marketplace.
Well I think because it’s not just design that we carry, we carry a heritage of education, very sophisticated retail, very sophisticated product development, very sophisticated brand development, and design is the thing that services that. So when clients come to London they’re not looking at it as a design industry, they’re saying ‘this is the place where great brands are being successful. Who are the people who are making them successful?’ So it’s design by association. So London will always be a great shop window. And we should keep on playing on that. The minute we drop that and take the fact that London’s hugely multicultural, so you’ve got to cater to people from all over the world who choose to work in London, means that London is an engine room of product creators and brand creators and design makers. It’s a bit like ‘why are great chefs French?’ or ‘why are great fashion designers Italian?’ or great engineers German. I think there’s an understanding amongst clients internationally that great design is done in Britain, and London is the shop window of that.
I think it’s just one of those questions – I just came from a meeting earlier where they used Hollywood to depict the vision and I queried whether Hollywood was the right vision because Hollywood is being replaced by Bollywood and so on – and I think that we have a period in the next 5, 10 years - I’m not an economist – but what I see happening is that a lot of our skills that we have here which are the best in the world, are being recognised by the Brit countries, they’re desperate to soak up and learn from us and then actually sell to their local markets which are much, much bigger, so they don’t, the Chinese don’t want to sell to the UK, that’s 60 million. They want to sell to 1.6 billion of their own domestic market. I think that it may be one of those things, with the best endeavour, we actually in 10,15 years time the industry will dwindle whatever because we won’t be able to service our local industry and our local economy and we won’t have the necessary, kind of, local knowledge to service the overseas markets because they will then have the same level of expertise. Whether culturally we have certain skills which are unique to a British mentality I don’t know. You only have to look at history and see how that’s changed over 100 years. So I think in the short time frame, yes, we’re going to be all right. I think in the long term change happens.
I think it’s interesting because we heard from smaller design agencies tonight that actually they’re in the UK market and that’s where they’re keeping their focus and some of those have made a strategic choice not to look to overseas markets because they just don’t have the time and actually, at the end of the day, the margins aren’t large enough to justify them investing in the upfront investment and to actually start competing in those markets, so I think what that raises is again, can we afford to be so insular and just look to within the UK market because increasingly there’s going to be international designers who are just as capable of dealing with their UK clients in the UK market and I think we need to take down those barriers and international boundaries. We’ve been hearing for the last two decades that these international barriers are eroding and disappearing and I think we need to actually become aware of that, that we’re part of a global industry and not part of our own cocoon.
I think it’s about creating an environment and maintaining the environment where creativity thrives and supporting that. Now that means sustaining a very, very strong education system. Not just in our universities but in our schools as well. It’s about creating an environment as well culturally and in business which recognises and values design creativity as an integral to success. So all of these things are important and there are also things that governments can do in terms of working with other governments around the world to protect intellectual property for instance. So there are all sorts of interesting things the governments actually can do that will enable businesses to thrive. But ultimately of course, it was always be down to the individuals and those that are ambitious and are looking for that business it’s there to be had. I think that was one of the other interesting things that came out of this evening, that the scale of opportunity internationally is immense. In India you only have to look at the sort of extraordinary challenges. You’ve got an economy which has grown in GDP by 9.2% in one year, in the last ten years it’s exploded as an economy. This isn’t a developing nation it’s a developed nation. There are immense design opportunities in a country like India or China or Brazil and these challenges are both from the industrialised base which has got huge and immense tasks and projects, the designers. But also often in the social infrastructure and in dealing with a lot of the competing challenges that emerge within an economy that’s changing so fast. Societal issues such as delivering health systems and health services, dealing with the complexities of a fast changing environment. So all of these are phenomenal opportunities for design but they’re not things that small design companies will necessarily just want to throw themselves into and I think that was one of the interesting conversations that came out tonight. Designers increasingly will, and are indeed, working in partnerships.