Page 27 of the October issue of BC Business Magazine features an article entitled “Designophobia: Why Is BC So Afraid Of Good Design?” by Trevor Boddy.

The article describes the writer’s recent visit to Quebec, on an invitation from Design Montreal, “the civic agency charged with promoting design in all its technical and artistic diversity”, and his admiration for Quebec design and the factors there that make good design possible, which according to him, are “design education infrastructure, its advocacy of design competitions, its promotion of designers through media products and junkets.”

He then proceeds to diss BC’s attitude towards good design, the “deep-seated fear of design that will sooner or later make us losers in the new global economy, where design is a primary engine”. So far, so good, I can swallow that. But then he states that MORE design competitions, not just for logos/graphic design, but also for buildings/architecture, such as for the Olympics, would be a good thing. “That hokey 2010 logo was the subject of a design competition - and that’s good news - but the competition was badly managed after first blowing a wad on an extravagant ‘Olympic Design Symposium.’ ” He should have questioned the competition concept itself, not the fact that VANOC actually gave a meagre public briefing to all would-be entrants, and even charged them $150 for the briefing. The only thing extravagant about that is the gauging of designers.

He has a valid point when he notes that BC is traditionally a resource-based economy and reluctant to welcome design-intensive industries. But it doesn’t make sense to claim, as he does, that more design competitions would contribute to greater recognition of design, while at the same time lamenting that the Inukshuk logo concept “was not methodically refined, tested and improved, as the best logo design must be.”

A design competition is the opposite of methodical refinement and market testing.

For more information on the why design competitions are a bad business practice and an ethical concern, check this Applied Arts article from Vol 19, No 5 (October 2004) republished on the ICOGRADA website or this GDC article on their policy on competitions or this article on RFPs for spec work or “The downside of speculative work” or “Show us three concepts, and if we like them we’ll give you the work”.

1. Splatt Says:
   October 20th, 2006 at 1:13 pm

   Thanks for the heads-up on the article Sigrid. I usually toss BC Business in the recycling bin. The GDC should respond in writing to Mr. Boddy and BC Business.

   I disagree with your statement about the waste of money on the “briefing”. The Olympic Design Conference was actually the best thing to come out of the 2010 logo contest. It was a great group of speakers and considering the cost, which included a huge lunch at the hotel across the road and a talk by CBC Sports guy Brian Williams, and a thick full-colour book chronicling the design of every Olympic games, it was a wicked deal. The fact it was prefaced by the emcee as a way to get excited about designing the 2010 logo was irrlevant (and easy to ignore).

   I am surprised at Trevor’s stance on design competitions given his familiarity with the GDC, and it would interesting to get him to expand on why he feels this way. He certainly doesn’t elaborate on his opinion in the article, but given his background as an architectural critic, a world where design competiions are common, maybe its not all that out of character.

   I do agree with his comment on the lack of vision and support given to any of the design disciplines in BC by our provincial government. The closest we got to any support was the short-lived Design Vancouver/Design BC period (late 1980s and early 1990s), but even that was more of a federal initiative than a provincial one and never had proper buy-in from the associations that the director purported to represent. We tried to contact Gordon Campbell after his election (I live in his riding and tried to use that as an “in”) to initiate a relationship and hopefully some support for activities like Graphex, which promote the value of design to the business community, but we never received any response at all.

   Maybe if we had events with busty girls in white t-shirts like New Media BC we’d get his attention. He certainly made himself available for those photo-ops!

2. Marian Bantjes Says:
   October 20th, 2006 at 5:07 pm

   I can’t comment on the article as I haven’t read it, but I’ve fired off an email to Trevor to see if he wants to weigh in, here.

3. sigrid Says:
   October 20th, 2006 at 5:25 pm

   Matt, the statement about the Olympic Design Symposium being extravagant was made by Trevor Boddy, not me - I was quoting him. Kinda like the pope who quoted someone else on Islam and then the quote got attributed to him, haha.

   I think his stance on design competition is uninformed, if well-intentioned. It’s important to differentiate between proper RFPs and wide-open, unpaid, on-spec design competitions. The links I posted which are on the GDC website explain it all very well.

4. Splatt Says:
   October 20th, 2006 at 9:40 pm

   Sorry Sigrid,

   I interpreted “He should have questioned the competition concept itself, not the fact that VANOC actually gave a meagre public briefing to all would-be entrants, and even charged them $150 for the briefing. The only thing extravagant about that is the gauging of designers.” as your words, not Trevor’s.

5. cat Says:
   October 21st, 2006 at 12:33 am

   “For more information on the why design competitions are a bad business practice and an ethical concern”

   The NO!SPEC campaign was set up for this very reason, to compile information on spec work and spec competitions.

   http://www.no-spec.com

   The nav on the right is full of articles on the subject.

6. Trev Boddy Says:
   October 21st, 2006 at 5:36 am

   Dear Sigrid/GDC People:

   Thanks for your post, containing some valide points. Because I get press comps to everything, I had forgotten that you each paid for that “foie gras appetizer” at Canada Place, but my real point is that the following competition was very poorly managed, in a context of no architectural competitions whatsoever, breaking all Olympic patterns. Many of us in the architecture world feel you designers were used by VANOC–the logo search became their token attempt to be open to innovative design ideas, and their ill-mnagement (and lack of follow-up) is proof of this ‘design tokenism.’ Well-run competitions are still useful in the world of architecture, and occasionally, grahic design, but only if the best minds are given freedom to frame and run them well. While I have been a juror and devisor of compeitions in several countries, the phone has never rang for me in British Columbia a decade ago, and I think mangerial “designophobia” is the reason. -Trev Boddy

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