Max Fraser of Spotlight Press, interview on the design industry

Editor-in-chief and director of Spotlight Press, Max Fraser, is a renowned British publisher, design editor, content consultant, curator and editor of London Design Guide. Present as speaker at Romanian Design Week 2016 during the Design for Change Center – The designer’s new skin- event, BR talked to him about the British design industry and the countries and trends to watch in the design world.

Romanita Oprea

How did you perceive the economic crisis and how did it affect you and the launch of your publication, the niche of your publication?

I’ve started it in April 2009, which is the worst possible time and I thought that if I can make this work now, I can make it work anytime. I’ve never read too much into the economic crisis, I think everybody is talking too much about it and I think that in some extends it inhibits progress, because people get scared. And then it has a snowballing effect on the economy. So, I tried not to pay too much attention to it actually and try to convince people to get behind a small, independent publication. I traded all the contacts I had at that time and tried to make it happen.

But do you believe that nowadays the niche publications are easier to be funded or get sponsorship than the big, generalist publications?

I think we see a polarization of how publications operate today. So you either have big, conglomerate publishing groups who buy up everyone and they still exist because of the volume. And then there a lot of middle-ground publications who had failed. In London we see a lot of growth in the independent publishing and often is people who worked for big, important companies who decide to do it themselves. But it’s not about massive volumes – selling 50.000 or 100.000 copies. A lot of them produce small volumes of 1000, 2000, 5000 copies. But they are very targeted content and it’s kind of niche content, very high production values, quite expensive copies to buy, almost like a book price and they come out maybe once every six months.

The publication that I produce types into a niche interest as well and I wouldn’t have considered doing it on my own before in the internet age, because now I can communicate directly with my costumers. Sell directly to the public, all over the world.

We can also see a lot of magazines that start online and then move to something physical. It’s not always the other way around.

What do you think that are the particularities of the UK design and how is it different in the whole design industry?

Is very hard to answer what are the characteristics of the British design because the output of the creativity from UK is quite eclectic. There is a lot of humor that goes with a lot of the British design, slightly naughty, a little bit cheeky. But in the product and furniture design is quite a refined, minimal style, also with a little twist.

It’s also interesting when we talk about the UK versus London, because London feels almost like a different country. A country within a country. London’s design scene is very mature and it’s got a lot of people working on it. It’s been a lot of work recently to understand the economic impact of the design scene in the UK. It’s part of the creative industries and have been proved to add millions of pounds to the economy and they employ something like 12 percent of the workforce of the country. So design is been taken seriously by the key stakeholders. Big businesses are understanding more and more the value of the design, to make them more competitive. And the British government is really pushing the message of the British creativity in other markets and using it as a commodity. Creativity is seen like a strong beacon of success.

In London we have lots of talented people working in all sorts of design’s disciplines. All areas’ of life are quite well covered in terms of strong design skill and that allows a lot of collaboration between people as well, across different sub-sectors of the design world. Therefore, nobody is really working in isolation.

And, at the same time, it’s a very competitive environment. There are a lot of people working and fighting for the same work. Actually, a lot of designers from UK find their work abroad. We don’t have a very strong manufacturing industry in the UK and is quite hard to get things made. What we are really good at doing is exporting our talent to other parts of the world and you can see that in architecture, furniture product design, in graphic design, etc. But London is still seen by the rest of the world as a magnet, a place where you can find stuff.

Do you believe it’s still the best place in the world, the most competitive one?

I don’t know what to say. London is becoming very expensive to live in. London is one of the creative capitals of the world, but I don’t know if it will be sustained in the future, if it becomes more and more expensive to be there. An established system is to be continuously fed with young talent that comes out of college, with new ideas, with fresh approaches. We’ve got one of the best design schools in the world in London, but we’ve just changed our immigration policy so that the foreign students have to leave right after they graduate. They can’t hang around, which is crazy. We educate them and then we tell them to go home. And then their countries benefit from their talent, which is madness. And those who do manage to stay, how do they survive with a really bad income, with a lot of debt from college, in a city that is so competitive? But, at the same time, that competitive nature, the need to success is good for their ambition. It actually weeds out the good from the bad. The bad disappear and the good people manage to make it work.

And when you look to other cities that are considered to be interested to move in, like Berlin for example, because is still pretty affordable and has creative people there. Because it’s almost too affordable to stay there people tend to become almost too complacent, not needing to earn that much in order to survive. Other people had said to me that some of them are even lazy, because it’s almost too easy. So I don’t know which is better.

For me, the thought of having freedom and just experiment things, without having to worry about earning a living would be the ultimate luxury.

What country would you say that is the one to watch now in design and the one having the biggest impact in the near future?

For a long time we’ve been talking about China changing as a country, moving away from the place that is just producing stuff for the rest of the world at a cheap price. The population becomes wealthier and more educated and their expectations grow, as well as their need to earn more money, therefore the cost of living in China becomes more expensive. And I think the Chinese are starting to recognize the importance of creating their own IP and create their own designs, instead of just producing what other design. To create their own mark and sell that as “Made in China” to the whole world. I think that we will see that happening more and more. The Chinese are changing their mentality from copying stuff to a nation that creates stuff. I think there is a recognition that the value is in creating, not just producing.

What about in the Eastern Europe?

I haven’t experienced a lot of Eastern Europe actually, so it’ a little bit difficult for me to answer that question. I think is a good energy in Istanbul and I’ve heard really positive things about Belgrade. I think that the Eastern Europe is probably the latest part of Europe to wake up to the design, as being something that will be valuable for their future, so it feels in that respect that is a place for opportunities to happen. There is not possible to do that in isolation. Romania doesn’t need to talk to Romania. It has to talk to the rest of the world. And make it more incisive for the rest of the world to come here and do something, buy things and take them back to their countries. I think it’s needed a little bit more confidence here. In what you have.

Earlier you were talking about creativity. What does it mean to you?

I think that mankind is inherently creative. So when we talk about creativity with C, as in Creative Industries, we have a desire to contribute to our world. So I suppose that creativity is an expression of our imagination and our expression of our desires as human beings to progress our world in the right direction, with flair and imagination. Some of the best innovations have come from challenging the status quo and pushing against preconceived notions of what is right and wrong. I think that creativity always challenges those status quos, pushes boundaries all the time and that is exciting, spells like an interesting new feature.

If you were to consider the big learnings of your career so far, which are they?

I think is important to trust your instinct as much as possible. When I’ve gone against it, often a project hasn’t been successful or fun or it became a burden. I’ve learnt when to say no to things and also how to identify opportunities when they come about. Often I think that opportunities are in small window of time, that you need to learn to catch, and I also think is really important not to take yourself too seriously. And to talk to and meet as many people as possible, because you ca never assume you are right and we can all learn a lot from each other. Try to be as open as possible to ideas!

What would you like to see different at the next edition of Romanian Design Week? Where do you want to see it evolve?

I think I would like to see it embrace more from the rest of the world. Something that I like when I come here is all that we see is Romanian design. For me, coming from a different culture is wonderful, because I learn how things are done here, but, as I was saying, is seems like is very much a Romanian event and I think that the next step for it is to become more international. I would like to see more participation from designers and companies from abroad that will then help create exchanges and will mature the market.

I think is an opportunity for collaborating in creating new projects on which will take part designers from different parts of the world. A project that is created for Romanian Design Week, but can then travel and be presented in different other parts of the world.

About Max Fraser

Max Fraser works as a design commentator across the media of books, magazines, exhibitions, video, and events to broaden the conversation around contemporary design

He delivers content and strategy for a variety of public and private bodies in the UK and abroad. He worked as the Deputy Director of the London Design Festival from 2012-2015 and continues to consult.

Max Fraser is the author of several design books including Design UK and Designers on Design, which he co-wrote with Sir Terence Conran. He owns Spotlight Press, a publishing imprint, recent titles include London Design Guide and Dezeen Book of Ideas. As a journalist, he writes for publications including Financial Times, Blueprint, Frame and Disegno.

Source: http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/