A view from the D&AD executive board

D&AD asked Bruce to contribute to their “Executive View” column on their website, which invites members of the D&AD executive board to muse on subjects of their choice. Here’s the piece he wrote:

I’ve got a feeling that this year is going to be a pretty exciting time. I’ve just come out of days of meetings, planning our creative goals and financial targets for Turner Duckworth in 2011. The list of ‘things to do’ is a long one, but I find it fires me up.

Like any designer who runs his own company, whatever its size, you need a complex set of skills, not all of which are taught at art college. The intuitive, creative side of solving design problems, which is the main reason that we all got into the job in the first place, is. Knowing how to set the strategic direction of the company, which is the fun part of running your own business, isn’t.  Neither is appreciating and understanding the often rather dry world of the accountants’ numbers that make it all tick.

The numbers have always been the hardest part for me to get interested in; these days my accountants show me accounts in more visual ways like pie charts or Venn diagrams. Anything colourful and diagrammatic beats columns of numbers in 6pt type every time. Meetings without any visuals can be so dull, and although these days there are others in the company whose responsibility it is to manage the numbers, I think that a real understanding of what is going on is still an essential part of my responsibility. The business of a design company is as important as the creative output, because without each other nothing works properly.

I have the greatest respect for those design agencies that combine creative success and commercial success. There is no shortage of businessmen in the design industry happy to offer advice on how to run a design business effectively. Also there is no shortage of great designers who care so much about their creative product, they nearly forget to make any money. It seems that great creativity often comes at the expense of business success or vice versa, which is a shame.

My New Year’s resolutions are all to do with topping up the inspiration reserves for me and everyone in the studio. In the past I’ve found myself either feeling guilty about, or not giving enough time to indulge in inspiring activities. Even though, the effect of actually doing them is so energising.

I’m determined this year to introduce our studio back to the handcraft of design, to reunite everyone, including me, with the reasons we started designing in the first place. I’m going to organise drawing, photography, printmaking classes, etc., in the evenings and encourage everyone to have a go. I’d like everyone to get their hands dirty and remind themselves that design is so much more than searching for inspiration on the internet. Everyone spends so much time on the web, and it’s not nearly the most interesting place to hunt for inspiration.

I’m going to reinstate something we used to do when we first started over 18 years ago. Wherever we traveled for meetings, we’d find out something inspiring about the place we were visiting and make time to visit an exhibition, gallery or some building of architectural significance, old or new. We fell into the trap last year of turning up in an amazing foreign city for a meeting and just seeing the inside of the meeting room and the airport. What a waste!

And, I’m determined for me and my team to go to every D&AD lecture in 2011, no excuses, because I’ve never been to one that hasn’t been inspirational on one level or another.

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Click here to read about D&AD’s upcoming President’s Lectures.