DBA Chief Executive Deborah Dawton opens The Design Effect

Good afternoon. I am delighted to welcome you here to the National Gallery and to The DBA’s The Design Effect. We’ll be exploring and celebrating the impact of design through talks, panel discussions, by hearing about case studies, over coffee, drinks later and over dinner conversations this evening.

I want this afternoon to be inspiring and stimulating. I want you to wonder at the breadth of what design is having an impact on – typically we narrow our reading, our conversations, our work to specific areas of specialism and so today, I want to open your eyes to what others like you, working in other areas of design are achieving. They’re sat next to you! And I want you to consider for a moment what could be possible if all designers created the sort of impact that we will see and hear about today.

And I want you to be stimulated in your thinking. I’m hoping that some of what you hear today will sit uncomfortably. To those contributing please don’t hold back. It’s good to debate and discuss. It’s something we do a lot at the DBA. But there is a difference between this occasion and those we typically hold online. This event is not Chatham House Rule, meaning others can report on what they heard and who they heard it from.

Please don’t stay in just a listening mindset. That would be to miss the opportunity to try out your ideas, your thinking out on others, who will endorse or perhaps challenge what you’ve said. The rigour that sits in our arguments has perhaps never been more important than it is today, and I want us to be practiced and versed in how we answer questions, in how we express our views, in how we communicate our ideas and inspire others to come along with us.

But first, an announcement that I am absolutely delighted to make:

An unveiling

Back in the mid 90s SeymourPowell, a leading industrial design consultancy in the UK, was asked to redesign the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards trophy. We’ve all come to know and to love the trophy we associate with these awards, bullet in shape, not to be carried home in your trouser pocket point down!

Not only has the materials and manufacturing landscape changed beyond all recognition over the last 30 years, but so has our understanding of the impact of our decisions. Our responsibilities have changed and we can’t go blindly on doing something which was right for years but now sits uncomfortably in a present-day context. Added to that, what was once a simple order each year, had grown more and more challenging to manufacture at a very much higher cost than I felt comfortable approving.

And so it was that this year, we embarked on a journey to design and deliver a new trophy worthy of the context that we find ourselves in today, that makes use of the manufacturing processes that we have available today and materials that simply didn’t exist 30 years ago. 

Designed by DBA member Morrama and manufactured by Batch.Works just a few miles from here, the trophy tells the story that the DBA has long championed, that effective design is borne out of great relationships; a client requirement, perhaps a business challenge being met head on by designers.

Both are equally important but bring very different skills, knowledge and experience to the table. Neither half can function at the level we expect to see without the other. And this interdependency has been brought into the trophy design – neither half of this new trophy will stand up without the other. It’s 3D printed, and this year, it’s made from coffee waste.

That fact, the coffee fact, is particularly pertinent to this afternoon.

Any history purists in the room? I’m about to summarise history to suit my story telling!

Pre-coffee everyone drank beer. Beer was the drink of choice by the Middle Ages for pretty much everyone. It was often safer than water. The poor drank the worst beer and the rich drank the best beer. Micro-breweries and taverns abounded. We drank a lot, got drunk and had fights. We know that alcohol is a suppressant – initially it suppresses that part of your prefrontal cortex that manages risk which is why you like everyone, love everyone, when you’re drunk – your fear of strangers is suppressed. But ultimately you fall asleep, that’s what suppressants do, and then you don’t sleep well because that ability is suppressed too.

And this is where creativity happens also. So when coffee imports started back in the 1650s and more and more coffee houses sprang up, the impact of a stimulant that created the opposite effect was notable. It’s in your history books. Transformation took place as people moved from beer and taverns to coffee and coffee houses.

The location of the first coffee house in London was significant, attracting merchants who worked nearby and the general public who wished to discuss current events of the time. They were joined by intellectuals who gathered and shared ideas which were often groundbreaking or outlandish for the time. Conversation and commerce. Coffee houses fostered “sober” intellectual debate. These coffee houses were known as “penny universities” – for the price of a one-penny cup of coffee, anyone could enter and participate in discussions bridging gaps between different social classes. These places became the primary setting for the exchange of scientific and philosophical ideas that fuelled the Age of Enlightenment.

They democratised knowledge, allowed for free exchange of ideas, and laid the foundation for modern financial and media institutions. They were the remote workplace of their time! And coffee houses were the social media of the 1600 – you got your gossip there, news and political insights!

Social media, remote working, microbreweries… Who knew?!

Famous institutions that are still in existence can trace their origins to coffee houses founded centuries ago. For instance, Lloyd’s Coffee house had so many deals struck between merchants and sailors within its walls that it eventually became Lloyd’s of London – one of the largest and oldest insurance markets in the world. The Stock Exchange came about in a similar way. 

The DBA is the coffee house of the 1600s. You are my Lloyds of London, my Stock Exchanges of the present day and future. I want today to be a stimulant for creativity. These awards, this event, the forums we host, the round tables, our work as a trade association, it’s all a stimulant for meeting, mingling and debating. We’re the “penny university” of our day – and if you are not benefiting richly from your involvement in the DBA then you’re missing out, you’re sitting in the coffee house with your headphones on!

Take them off. Listen in. Join in. And then sort your studios out. How can you make your workplace your version of a modern-day coffee house of the 1600s? How can you help develop the thinking of the teams that work for you? What opinions are you sharing with them? What journey are bringing them on? What are they able to listen in to? Is it any wonder some of them sit there with headphones on and walk out at the end of the day (…that you made them come in for).

These awards ask the question, “what difference did design make?” It allows us to stay a little arm’s length doesn’t it, keeps things at a brand and agency level. Try changing the question, “what difference did I make…did we make?” Hold that conversation with your teams. And perhaps move to the next most obvious question which is, “what difference could we make?” I’d love to see us all become the penny-universities of our industry – how can you take that idea forward?

One guaranteed outcome will be more effective work – delighted clients – and happy customers.  Your team’s consideration of the impact they are having can increase, and you need to take them on that journey. So have a think about what tomorrow looks like. Use today to find out what others are doing, how they’re engaging their teams and keeping them stimulated. It’s time to spark up conversation and stimulate debate. You’ve got the coffee machines – just start the banter.

So, congratulations to all who walk away with one of our trophies today. I want you to display it prominently I want people to walk into your places of work and pick this up and say, “what is this?” And you’ll be able to say, come and have a coffee and I’ll explain.

Thank you Léa, Guy, Jo and Julien who got us to this – we’re delighted – and I am convinced they will be much coveted and the subject of many conversations. And if we pick different materials each year I’ve got themes for speeches for ever!

Enjoy the rest of your afternoon and evening. If you’ve come with others, break away from them – go and talk to more interesting people today! Back in the day, the penny got you your coffee and the right to join any conversation!