It's never been more important to develop your business skills.
This free training and development guide looks at how formal and informal training can help to develop the skills you need to become more profitable, more competitive and more capable.
In this section we will cover:
- Why you should consider training
- What Continuing Professional Development is and what it can offer
- The practical applications of training for people in design businesses
- Alternative routes to learning
Introduction
This guide will explore some of the things a typical design business has to be able to do well, taking a closer look at the kinds of skills required in order to maximise potential. It will then show how formal and informal training can help develop these skills in order to create stronger, more capable teams and more competitive and profitable businesses.
This guide doesn’t offer an exhaustive list of all available courses, but instead tries to highlight how ongoing skills development can be really valuable to design businesses and individuals.
To find out more about some of the training currently available, visit the Training for designers section of our directory listings – where you can browse upcoming courses, provide feedback, or suggest other courses for inclusion.
Why train?
If you are a designer, or even the owner of a design business, it’s likely you haven’t given much (if any) thought to skills training and professional development. According to Design Council research, architects are more than twice as likely as designers to be doing job related training.
In fact, the proportion of people engaged in job related training was far lower among designers than for almost all similar occupations. In a survey that included civil engineers and individuals working in the media, just 16% of designers had recently undertaken some form of professional development – a figure matched only by artists.
Typically, designers trade on their primary talent – creativity and originality. In fact, many design practitioners choose to enter the field based on a creative impulse rather than entrepreneurial spirit or business drive. The result of this is the creation of a sector that critics sometimes refer to as an underdeveloped cottage industry.
Like any other business, a design consultancy has to make money in order to survive and grow.
In order to maintain a competitive advantage, designers must be able to respond to the changing needs of clients in other sectors.
Working in the design industry is no different to working in any other area of business: success demands a range of business, communications and interpersonal skills that aren’t necessarily taught as part of a design degree.
Over the next three chapters, we will explore the ways in which formal Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training and less formal ongoing learning can give both individuals and businesses the abilities they need to become more competitive.
Most design businesses fail in the first couple of years. Most design businesses have no succession planning strategy. Most design businesses employ fewer than five people. Many would say that this is just the nature of the design ecosystem. However, I believe that unless designers start demanding personal development and employers start investing in their talent to grow and retain their people, the design sector will continue to be small, marginal and lack the confidence and financial muscle required to influence government policy and business investment. Julian Grice, Chief Executive Officer, The Team
Meeting the needs of today’s clients
Design is increasingly a holistic and complex process, for which university training in one traditional discipline may leave students only partially prepared. Take, for example, a product design company with a brief to develop a category-busting new product.
Over the course of the project, the design team will need to work closely (and communicate effectively) in a variety of ways with trends research companies, ethnographers, semioticians, manufacturers, technologists, marketing specialists and – of course – the clients themselves. This interdisciplinary approach to running a design consultancy requires a breadth of business, communications and collaborative skills sometimes initially lacking in creatively and artistically trained people.
While there is currently a push to put interdisciplinary skills on the agenda of academic design courses, this guide will focus on the opportunities available to design professionals that have already left full-time education.
Learning on the job versus formal skills development?
Firsthand experience is, of course, indispensible. Many designers acquire their business skills by learning on the job – and there’s a lot to be said for learning valuable lessons from your mistakes.
But trial and error is not the most efficient way to grow a business.
Smart design consultancies will continue to develop both the business and creative skills of their directors and staff over time.
By consciously developing a range of complementary business skills such as strategy and planning or communications, individuals and companies alike can improve their long-term prospects, as well as their day-to-day contribution to the design studio.
I have taken a number of courses and they have absolutely been worth every penny. Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design’s Advanced Patternmaking course, for example, has allowed me to work more efficiently and quickly, which sets me apart from the competition. Overall, training has given me confidence and an understanding of my profession, as well as a skill set which I should have learnt at university, but didn’t. Catherine Bell, Freelance fashion designer