JKR

One interesting strand in the coverage of Jonathan Ive being knighted comes from Creative Review: “It’s remarkable just how much time Jobs and Ive apparently spent together… they would have lunch most days that Jobs was in the office and Jobs would routinely spend afternoons in Ive’s studio studying models and concepts.” The coverage notes a similarity to the relationship designer Dieter Rams (a huge influence on Ive) enjoyed with various employers. “At Braun I always reported to Erwin and Artur Braun or, after their departure, the Chairman of the Board. It is the same in my relationship with the furniture manufacturer, Vitsoe, where I worked closely with the founder Niels Vitsoe and, since his death, Mark Adams.”

I wonder if there is something in this – that creativity within corporations has potentially more vitality and power than in the more typical agency/client set-up? William Golden found his place designing communications for CBS and over the years turned this job into a world-class identity system for the brand. Harry Beck basically created the Tube Map (and so a whole map-making language) around the periphery of his day job as an engineering draftsman at the London Underground Signals Office. Even after company and designer found themselves at loggerheads, Beck continued to design improvements to the map up until his death.

And perhaps it is the duration of such relationships, rather than who signs the paycheque, that counts. For example, Paul Rand was effectively the in-house designer at IBM for almost a decade. And of course the whole world of haute couture is based on a symbiotic relationship between the business heads and the design names that lead their brands. So it’s easy to find examples of world-class work that are the fruits of embedded relationships. I wonder, as today’s corporations get wise to the high return on investment that design can deliver, might we see more and more of these arrangements?

Perhaps, but I think it might just come down to chemistry, rather than an employment policy. The reason two people spend hours and days in each others company on a design project is because they have a spark. They see something in their opposite which completes and improves on what they could do alone. You can’t recruit for that; it’s the lucky bounce of fate, like Lennon meeting McCartney at that fabled church fête shindig.

The only clear advantage of a more permanent ‘in-house’ arrangement is that it allows the creatives greater permission to try and to fail (at least in an enlightened organisation). If you’re not worried about ‘blowing the pitch’ you can focus on what is really important – the work. Also, having a creative who believes they are committed to a decade’s endeavour results in a focus on doing the right thing, not just the splashy here and now thing. Finally, between these two partners there is something quite simple – a level playing field, and a sense of trust that cuts both ways.

Of course such collaborative support between project partners does not have to be the exclusive preserve of in-house design…just for the record.