London has tried hard to transform itself into Europe's tech startup hub in recent years, with mixed results. One spectacular failure last spring was Boris Johnson's £1 million initiative to attract digital entrepreneurs. But beyond the larger debate about incentives and resources is a more fundamental problem: we are simply not producing the design talent needed to succeed in the digital age. Britain has traded what was a world-leading focus on craftsmanship and innovation for mere vocational training in how to use specific digital tools.
What's required to succeed in digital today – amid a constantly changing landscape in which new tools and channels appear almost weekly – is an adaptive and imaginative attitude, the curiosity to experiment and a desire to make stuff. When I was a student, the designers I admired – such as Tomato, Fuel and Vaughan Oliver, among others – made things that disrupted the "rules" of graphic design: orderly typography, hierarchy, balance. It was free and it was exciting. I saw their work and thought, "That's great design", not "That's great typography".
Today, the explosion of web and other digital design disciplines has elevated the importance of functionality and expertise in using software such as Photoshop above all else. The effect is that specialist production skills are killing the ability to think like a real designer, push boundaries and make something new.
Popular and admittedly attractive portfolio platforms like Dribbble only exacerbate the problem by rewarding mediocrity. Everything looks pretty much the same: flat and static interfaces framed in an iPhone 5. Where's the innovation? How the designer presents his or her work is an opportunity to experiment and create, one that's lost when the structure of the platform itself can't be tinkered with.
But now a crop of truly innovative young digital designers is emerging. Often self-taught, these design punks are converging technologies with craft to make the digital stuff we'll use and love in the future.
Some of the best graduate students I've seen recently are coming from schools in France and Scandinavia, where they learn to code and craft experiences for multiple platforms and physical devices. These schools instil their students with the freedom and confidence to experiment, differentiating themselves from each other, and it shows. British design schools will need to overhaul their often antiquated curriculums to keep up with these new innovators from Europe.
And the market for digital design demands it. Take Google, for example. In recent years, the company that focused on superior functionality above all else has now become a design powerhouse. Its relentless desire to innovate and iterate, while also embracing craftsmanship and storytelling, has set it apart.
The truth is that nobody knows what tools will be available to produce great digital design next year, let alone a decade from now. At my agency, Huge, we've started using the Oculus Rift to design for retail spaces that don't exist yet. The technology – recently acquired by Facebook – uses CAD files to make the invisible visible.
Becoming a proficient "artworker" doesn't prepare a designer for such new contexts – only exposure to and comfort with myriad, shifting technologies and form factors and being given the task of "fixing" or "making" for them can. Many self-motivated young designers and students are now graduating with that exposure and comfort level. If more of them come from the UK, we might just have a shot at becoming Europe's tech hub.
Andy Thomas is creative director of digital and design agency Huge London.
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