Design needs to take a page out of the music industry's history books?!
With patterns and principles well established, digital design is finally becoming a commodity, a background thing that people acknowledge but don't really care for. Though, the invisibility of "good design" was always considered a virtue. Good design soon will be AI generated, and disappear into the background, just like music has disappeared into the backgrounds of our lives.
There have been really clever thoughts on music as a commodity from the iPod era, and they now start to apply to design as well. Think of music manager Tim Renner's book “Death is not so bad!”1 .
In the book, he retells the story of the commercialization of music since the 80s and how it became a highly capitalized industry with about 20% profit margins for selling CDs, fully relying on creative people. And how it was dooming to collapse under downloads and streaming services threatening the profits.
Here are three highlight sections that among others, I believe, can be rewritten identically for digital design. It reads all too familiar:
Modern radio and television bosses are in danger of becoming mere poll-takers. However, their job is not to stubbornly research the opinions of others, but to have an opinion of their own and to stand up for it. Innovation will not come from market research; it only ever cements the status quo. If the medium stops moving, it will eventually lose its right to exist, it will no longer provide any impetus and will lose its value.
But it is precisely this urge to optimize that can tip a highly sensitive field. The desire for security can destroy creative tension and thus the business field. The large compilation departments, the special marketing units and the assembly line producers of dance music represented a network that was allowed to exist not out of greed, but out of a misunderstood sense of responsibility. The German management of the major music companies put so much energy into building up this security that gradually a network was created in which it was incredibly comfortable. Why should the business be made to swing on the dangerous trapeze any longer, dependent on new artists who only had a 10 percent chance of being a hit, when it was so much safer and more comfortable down below, between the tightly woven ropes of second exploitation and quickly produced one-hit wonders?
Optimization, predictability, and professionalization are a matter of fact for capital. For art, it was the red shimmering apple on the tree of temptation, with the promise of even better working conditions and more recognition. Of course, the music industry would like to be taken as seriously as other industries.
So maybe, when we're thinking about the future of design, we can look to the music industry. How it has changed and the troubles it is facing today.
From song lengths constantly decreasing so that people listen to more music within the same time, resulting in more plays and therefore “higher” royalties2 . To utilizing click farms for generating plays and visibility3 . Or Spotify's royalty-free, self-published music finding its ways into lo-fi and chill-out playlists4 — so that no royalties need to be paid at all.
These examples are about nothing more than quantity, release acceleration, success inflation and cost reduction. The same demands that are placed on designers.
In contrast to music, designers were always aware that while they come from a creative background, they are doing industrialized work in capitalism's interests. They weren't "corrupted artists" as musicians probably felt. Just like in design, optimization through user research is considered a process strength and not a lack of confidence.
Nevertheless, among designers, there is a growing disappointment: With safe instead of brave choices. With the sameness and lack of creativity of their work. With trying to, but never actually being valued by management for their part in a product's success.
Music had to accept to live in the background, to be invisible and functional. But when a bold and brave choice comes along, and when it pays off with the audience, it has significant impact.