Do you want to become a “Manager of Design” or a “Designer of Management”? In the context of my earlier posting on “What is Design Management?” I’ve found the following job advertisement by Pricejamieson recently:
“Recruitment Consultant - Design Management:
Do you have a passion for brands and a knowledge of design management? Would you like to apply these skills within a new and innovative environment? … You will need a strong background/understanding of design management, have the ability to ‘juggle’ many projects at a time and thrive under pressure. …”
After all this job posting left me with ambivalent feelings. On one hand such a job offering shows that at least in the UK there are jobs in the creative industries which need to be filled. On the other hand the job description reminds me on an inverted tautology (does this exist?): Talking about Design Management without even specifying what their understanding of Design Management actually is … any suggestions?
Fazal Khan Says:
February 25th, 2006 at 17:44Visit Fazal Khan
I have been searching for jobs as a Design Management professional and the unfortunate thing I have seen here in the UK,is that roles defined as Design Management,are not much more then a mixture of a glorified project manager and slightly short of a creative director. Design as a term is still very much tied to graphic design, which I suppose is the same around most of the world. Certainly here in the UK it’s not widely recognised as a discipline in it’s own right. As a Design Management student at LCC I have to say, that Design Management education is certainly not doing the discipline any justice, sitting more as a subset of marketing. Lack of educated knowledge in the education system, and also in the working environment mean that it will be a long time before we see any true Design Management roles surfacing, and by that point I doubt any role will be defined as “Design Manager”. Instead I see it being absorbed into other management courses, and then becoming a “desired” knowledge within a job specification.