British designers are worried about competition from universities
British design associations are sounding the alarm: due to competition from universities, professional designers are unemployed.
Many designers complain about the difficult life of clients ordering website design from students and blame the “civilized” countries, where everything seems to be wrong, but much better. They say clients there are educated, non-greedy, they understand that you need to order work from professionals, etc. In general, not the designer’s life, but raspberries :)
However, this opinion does not quite correspond to reality, moreover, our colleagues in Britain have even harder. If Ukrainian and Russian design companies have to compete for low-budget orders with the so-called “Hungry students” who make any website 50/100/500 uev, the UK is still worse (for design studios).
In addition to similar competition in the low-budget sector, which everyone is generally accustomed to, British studios have recently had to compete in the struggle for more profitable orders, but not with individual students or self-educated teams, but directly with universities that offer development quite complex projects in the field of design (industrial, web, multimedia) for a nominal fee or even for nothing. “Where does this generosity come from?” You ask. The fact is that universities receive funding from the state or charitable foundations, which they use to develop their students' educational projects. Moreover, unlike our universities, they strive to implement real projects for real customers so that graduates really have practical experience. As a rule, universities try to find these projects in organizations from their region, and to make their risk-free proposal they offer to work for nothing or for ridiculous money. They can afford it, because have state or sponsor funding allocated for this. As a result, local design companies lose orders because Naturally, customers do not mind getting a design project for free or very cheap. Among other things, this, by the way, leads to such an effect as problems with the employment of university graduates, studios that have received fewer orders due to competition with universities do not expand the staff and cannot take on new employees. They can afford it, because have state or sponsor funding allocated for this. As a result, local design companies lose orders because Naturally, customers do not mind getting a design project for free or very cheap. Among other things, this, by the way, leads to such an effect as problems with the employment of university graduates, studios that have received fewer orders due to competition with universities do not expand the staff and cannot take on new employees. They can afford it, because have state or sponsor funding allocated for this. As a result, local design companies lose orders because Naturally, customers do not mind getting a design project for free or very cheap. Among other things, this, by the way, leads to such an effect as problems with the employment of university graduates, studios that have received fewer orders due to competition with universities do not expand the staff and cannot take on new employees.
The British Designers Association rightly considers this competition to be not entirely fair and is trying to influence universities through supervisory authorities. How this will end is still unknown.
Personally, in my opinion, universities should develop educational projects through sponsoring local design studios, on the terms of attracting students to real projects. Thus, they would at the same time get to know potential employers.
Original on our corporate blog
Update. As I understand it, many here have the opinion that it’s just worthless designers in Britain who are worried about student competition. Type it is necessary to work better and clients will be drawn to you. In my opinion, however, there is a big difference between 2 situations:
- the student Jones comes to the customer company without any work experience and says that I will make the project 10 times cheaper than the Horns & Hoofs studio
- Professor Dr. Dr. comes to the customer company Jones, laureate ..., author ... and says that the project can be done by a group of his students, under his strict guidance and also 10 times cheaper or for nothing. Moreover, for all that, the work of a professor and a group of his students is really not free (it’s free or almost free only for the customer), but it’s funded by taxpayers, i.e. including and the Horns & Hoofs studio
In the first case, the competition is quite healthy, the service from a less qualified, inexperienced contractor is cheap enough and the customer chooses to either get the right quality for the right money or take a chance and get an incomprehensible quality for a little money.
In the case of a group of students under the guidance of a professor (we believe that he is a professional in the subject area), the risks of the customer to get a completely low-quality product are much lower, and the price remains zero or very low, and not due to healthy competition, optimization of business processes, etc. n. and due to subsidies.