Everything that's going wrong with design

Next our Performance Review series turns the spotlight on design. Dezeen editorial director Max Fraser sets out 10 ways that the industry is dysfunctional.

Excessive resource consumption

There is a solid understanding that maintaining the pace at which we're using the planet's material resources is untenable. The principles of a circular economy, whereby existing materials are kept in a perpetual loop and anything ordinarily considered waste is turned back into a valued resource, are widely discussed by those producing physical objects. Great strides are being made by organisations such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in proving the business case to switch to a circular model.

But how many are actually implementing robust circular principles? The vast majority of objects introduced to market still follow the linear take-make-waste model and contain a complicated mish-mash of different materials, finishes and chemicals that make the circular model almost impossible. This ongoing approach has a knock-on effect; after all, a product's end-of-life becomes the problem of the local municipality and, if handled badly, the health of our collective environment.

The "polluter pays" principle of pushing responsibility for disassembly and discard back onto the producer is a political red herring, but until legislation penalises companies putting products into the world, the manufacturing brands aren't sufficiently incentivised to fundamentally change their approach.

Too much stuff

Whether the materials and means of production are harmful or not, the fact of the matter is we simply make too much stuff. Or more precisely, too many iterations of the same thing.

The product typology that comes under the most fire is chairs. "Do we need any more chairs?" people often ask. If we're looking for something on which to simply rest our posteriors, the answer is no. Our tireless quest to tackle the solitary seat – revered as the almighty object to design – has given rise to an unfathomable amount of choice and a saturated marketplace. But when distinctive design has become a market-differentiating factor across all public-facing spaces, it's hardly surprising that so many styles of the same thing exist.

The chair is not alone; the same can be said for pretty much every product category. Brands retain a strong desire to pioneer a surprise hit, while helping to fuel the perpetual creation of the next product iteration are the endless requests from the market and media to know what's new.

And the factory workforce must operate at capacity, and the expensive machinery must keep turning. You get the picture: the cogs of capitalism drive our endless call for more. And we don't know how to stop.

Broken royalty system

It has long been called out that the royalty contracts offered by manufacturers to designers don't fairly reward the amount of work required. Most of the labour is undertaken upfront in anticipation of the product generating revenue perhaps a year or two later.

A designer will then typically earn about 3 to 5 per cent royalty on the wholesale price of their product. Only if you're lucky will you be paid an advance against royalties during the initial design stages.

In the days when the market was less saturated, a designer might have had a better chance of scoring a hit, but these days it's rare. Selling enough units to earn a respectable passive income for as long as it sells requires years of perseverance and a certain amount of luck. In reality, you need a whole portfolio of products selling concurrently to financially stay afloat. The knock-on danger is that we have created a burnout and hustle culture, whereby a designer must possess a plethora of skills to adapt to whatever work comes their way.

Furthermore, in light of resource depletion and overproduction, the incentive model of selling as many units as possible is incompatible with the need to reduce consumption. A designer has no incentive to design a product that can be endlessly repaired; the break-and-replace model is favourable for their earnings.

Absence of risk-taking

The pool of designers who get a chance to design something for a well-reputed international brand seems to be shrinking. Walk down the aisles of any major furniture fair and you'll see the same roster of names. Predominantly male and established, there is nothing wrong with the individual designers – all standalone talents. But there is a sense that the brands are taking refuge in steady, experienced and reliable studios rather than taking a punt on a lesser-known or more experimental talent.

Many put this down to the creeping takeover of the industry by larger corporate holding groups. For example, a lot of the pioneering post-war family-owned Italian producers were originally led by their visionary founders, who would chase innovation and personality across their portfolio. It was risky but formative. My mind jumps to expressive and characterful lights by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni's for Flos in the 1950s and '60s, for example. Like many of its peers, the brand is now owned by a combination of multi-national private equity firms.

Now there is the pressure that a design must sell into a defined product category immediately, driven by brands' twitchy sales and marketing departments pressured to deliver guaranteed results for their shareholders. Reissuing successful products from the back catalogue in new colours is the favoured low-risk approach. This conservatism results in so many objects that just look reassuringly safe and predictable.

Lack of diversity

It has been acknowledged for a long time that there is a lack of diversity in the design industry, yet little seems to change. Graduates emerge from education saddled with debt and fall into an industry that pays badly. For those without a buffer, it's not a viable prospect and that predetermines who can afford to stick at it.

For those who do, design leadership is still heavily concentrated in homogenous groups, in turn affecting hiring practices, product decisions, and perspectives in problem solving. Diverse users often don't see themselves involved or reflected in decision-making.

Quality for the few

A high-end rug producer once said: "I catch the crumbs that the rich brush off the table." He was referring to the whimsical spending habits of those who can afford to buy his products.

One thing's for sure, he is not alone. Parade the aisles of the prominent trade fairs and you'll be presented by endless displays of lavish expressions of luxury living hoping to catch a wealthy buyer's eye.

Enormous sofas, lengthy dining tables, intricate chandeliers, sleek kitchens – there is an extraordinary proliferation of fancy (and sometimes unnecessary) stuff aimed at rich people. And yes, while all of these items crucially support a workforce of specialist craftspeople around the world, I do often wonder if there are really enough people out there who can afford it all.

Many producers claim that buying into quality means that the product will last forever, which is surely the most sustainable approach to consumption. That's an argument I can get behind but unfortunately that aspiration is just so far beyond the financial reach of the majority. It would seem that the days of design serving the everyday needs of the people are gone.

Continuous market turbulence

Behind the slick product displays and well-presented staff is an industry, like many others, experiencing trading conditions that are constantly in flux. The price of commodity materials and labour costs have gone up considerably since the pandemic, reflected now in the price of so many goods and services. Of course, that also means people have less disposable income to spend on nice-to-have items.

Add to this the ongoing uncertainty of president Trump's import tariffs on certain materials and products and it's easy to understand why clients and brands are constantly chopping and changing their budgets and commitments, or postponing or cancelling projects altogether. This turbulence looks set to continue into 2026.

Too many designers, not enough work

The sexy allure of design as a vocation has given rise to a dizzying number of design courses around the world. Every year, institutions churn out yet more aspiring talents. And while they may come out trained in the skills of design, few have much understanding of the industry they're intending to enter.

Work experience is key, yet it's sorely missing along their study path, starving young hopefuls of the broader business considerations. The graduate journey requires thick skin and perseverance to find one's place amid so few job opportunities.

Those sparse opportunities tend to exist in increasingly expensive capital cities, where one has to immediately find some financial footing. For those wanting to pursue their own creative endeavours, few can afford to give themselves the space to experiment and make formative mistakes.

The clamber to become an instant success is frantic and, although social media tools are available to reach audiences fast, presenting something that stands out and looks good in an image has become an imperative for survival.

The brand invasion of our senses

The influx of "immersive experiences" in recent years has given rise to no end of vacuous installations promising some sort of sensorial otherworldliness. Often taking the form of a purpose-built pavilion, seldom is the hyper-designed experience free of the corporate overlords and their mighty budgets, capturing our data at every turn while delivering some marketing guff as you exit through the gift shop. Architects and designers have been commandeered to deliver them.

Often weak in concept yet laden with distracting, jargon-heavy language and special effects, somehow they manage to draw crowds who queue patiently to plod through said installation on the promise of "a moment of reflection", only to be surrounded by a hoard of phone-wielding fellow visitors capturing said moment for their Instagram accounts.

Okay, they're not all vapid, but are often unnecessary. They leave me wondering at what point we lost the ability to call a chair a chair, a car a car and nonsense nonsense.

Tinkering around the edges

For a growing number of people, there is a strong belief that design can change the world, albeit in partnership with a multitude of collaborators from other industries. However, a recent report published by the Design Council revealed that the design industry is woefully equipped with the necessary green design skills, with only 43 per cent of designers feeling that they have the capabilities. This doesn't bode well when we're presented with the urgency of the climate crisis.

In the meantime, substantial (as well as modest) environmental actions are vastly outnumbered by the prevailing behaviour of the 20th century, whereby extractive and polluting materials and processes continue to dominate our supply chains.

While some may chastise the idealism of the "design can change the world" mantra, others just tinker at the edges of meaningful change. There is a danger that we "other" the problems, believing that more qualified people are doing the good work. Our governments hardly lead by example, scaling back existing green policies and diluting new ones, while regurgitating tenuous commitments to climate targets.

For all the positive stories of change out there, there is also a cancer of bad norms – of things being too complicated, too hyped, too expensive, and, well, just too much.

Max Fraser is editorial director of Dezeen.

The top photo is by Forlll De Rad via Unsplash.

Performance Review

This article is part of Dezeen's Performance Review series interrogating the problems plaguing architecture and design, from difficult working conditions to ethical dilemmas.

The post Everything that's going wrong with design appeared first on Dezeen.