For the past 14 years, David R. Brown has been president of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, one of the nation's leading design and visual art schools. Here he talks with Peter Lawrence, Chairman of Corporate Design Foundation, about design education and the growing importance of design in business.

Over the decades, Art Center has differentiated itself from other design schools through its strong ties with the business world. How did this come about?

It is closely related to the philosophy of Edward "Tink" Adams who founded Art Center in 1930. Adams felt that there needed to be an art school that was completely real-world oriented so much so that in the school's first catalog, he trumpeted his pedagogical strategy in bold type: "No teachers!" By that he meant that the educating process would be conducted by people working in the field rather than by professional teachers. So, for example, in the mid-'50s, transportation design was being taught by working professionals from Southern California and Detroit. It was perfectly natural for them to assign class projects that were similar to the kinds of projects that they were dealing with in their own practice. The corporate-sponsored project was a natural outgrowth.

How do corporate-sponsored projects work?

We view them as collaborative research done primarily for educational purposes. We seek sponsors who support that philosophy and are willing to make a real commitment to the project. We do not take sponsors who are looking for cheap labor or who do not understand that the work created belongs to the student. Sponsors are asked to introduce the project to the class, then return three or four times over the 14-week semester to critique the work and give more input, and then be the primary audience for the final presentation. That's a large commitment of talent and resources that goes well beyond the typical $35,000-$50,000 contribution. This money, by the way, funds scholarships for the whole school, not just for the departments that are participating in the project.

Are you at all concerned that this corporate input may skew the curriculum?

We are aware of the danger, but over the course of their four years at Art Center, most students have only two, maybe three, experiences with a sponsored project in a curriculum that involves 40 three- and four-hour courses. A greater sensitivity involving sponsored programs is that students may try to emulate what exists in the market rather than let their imaginations explore what might be. Because we're aware of this possibility, we try to have these projects be future-oriented. The focus in class is on what could be, not on what currently is.

Give me an example of a future-oriented project?

A good example is a project with PictureTel, which makes distance communication and teleconferencing equipment. The assignment is not to redesign the gear, the screen or the camera, but to think about the environment in which this technology can be used to better advantage. A recent project with Acer, the Taiwan computer company, asked students to think about the applications of computers that don't look or act like computers, but still function the way computers do. Those are sophisticated problems. We see designers being asked to consider things that would have been unknown a decade ago.

Has the complexity of design problems changed Art Center's approach to education?

Yes. Many of our sponsored and non-sponsored activities are now conducted in a team-based environment. We try to make the team interdisciplinary putting the 2-D designers together with the 3-D designers, graphic designers with industrial designers. We've even had projects in which design students partner with MBA students. Because problems are more complex and sophisticated, I believe the day of the auteur designer is gone. There's still a place for them in the world, but they're not nearly as prevalent a model as a while ago.

Have any companies elected to develop a student's idea?

There are instances of that. We try to help students work out licensing agreements or royalty agreements and so forth with companies that actually do decide to pursue an idea. But it doesn't happen routinely because it's just a 14-week project. How many complicated products are designed, engineered and developed in 14 weeks? More often the case is that the company makes an offer of employment.

Are young people entering Art Center today different than when you became president in 1985?

Yes. But at Art Center, they're not so young: the average age is 24. The generation that arrives in college today was born in the post-Vietnam era. Their character is more that of a demanding consumer than an idealistic world-changer. That's partly because it is not uncommon for young people to graduate from college with $50, $60, $100,000 in loans taken out against their future earnings prospects. College is not something they're just going through to find themselves on their way to becoming an adult. This is something that they have specifically chosen to do and they are paying dearly for, both in terms of personal commitment and financial resources.

Over the past 14 years have any changes truly astonished you?

Technology. It has developed faster and been adopted into more disciplines than any pre-technology literate person could have predicted. Today's Furby has more computing power than the first Macintosh computer introduced in late 1984. We've been forced to reconsider a fundamental issue in design education "What are the tools of the future going to be?" We used to argue passionately that traditional design tools would never die because they were more about thinking than about actual skills, more about visualizing form than actually making a beautiful object. My own opinion is that the fundamental processes of thinking are being changed and in ways mediated by this technology.

Another difference is that everything today is multidisciplinary. The computer has contributed to that, but the culture has made it okay for people to cross over, for the illustrator to become a special-effects animator or a web site designer. Whether the school pushes interdisciplinary study or not, students will grab whatever tools are at hand to accomplish whatever it is that they're trying to do.

Is the industrial design process changing as well?

Yes. For one thing, in the old days, the battle cry was "design for manufacturing" you've got to design and engineer that camera body to within an inch of its life so that it can be manufactured in the quadrillions at triple-sigma quality. Today it's "manufacturing for design." We're doing some prototype desktop manufacturing at Art Center taking original ideas created on computers, which drive rapid-prototyping equipment, which produce parts which are assembled and can be handled and used and worked with a couple of hours later. It's not very far from that to rapid or even "desktop" manufacturing.

Will consumers someday participate in designing the products they buy?

It's happening now. The other night my ten-year-old, Barbie-addicted daughter went on the Mattel Barbie web site and designed her own Barbie. She picked its name, its personality, its friends, its style, its hair, its eyes, its accessories. Seven days later it arrived in a box that read: "Melanie, designed by Meredith." Now that is an amazing change. That has huge implications not only for industry but for designers and design.

To what extent are design students being exposed to the business context in which they will be working?

Not enough. If there's a criticism I have, and one that is routinely heard at Art Center, that's it. There's not enough exposure to the business of designing in a corporate environment, the business of running a consultancy, the business of conducting an individual freelance practice or building a small business. We don't do it as well as we should, but that may be in part because students come to us for a degree in design, not an MBA. And we only have them for so much time. The traditional four-year course to earn a bachelor's degree was set at a time when the world's total knowledge was 1/100th what it is today.

Since 1930, Art Center has graduated some 12,000 students. Do you track where they have gone?

We track graduates 20, 10, five, two and one year out. At the end of five years, 50% are in business for themselves, either as independent contractors or actually running a sizeable enterprise. That's a change from the past when graduates would look for jobs with an agency, a manufacturer or a consulting firm. The computer has made it possible to become a full-scale entrepreneur very quickly.

Given the global nature of business today, what are the implications to Art Center?

It's become more important than ever to have students from a broad array of countries. At Art Center, 30% now come from other countries. In our own small way, we do business on a global scale. It's just as typical to have somebody from Italy visiting Art Center as from San Francisco. Our corporate-sponsored projects show that. We actually had a semester not long ago in which all of the project sponsors were international corporations.

Where does the individual cultural view fit into the global perspective?

It opens the way for those breakthrough ideas that are deeply culturally based, authentic and original. For instance, we work with a big Korean company involved in export markets. Traditionally they have done design research by looking at other products. But over and over, we remind them to do research that includes their own cultural origins. A breakthrough product comes from a deep cultural awareness and interpretation as well as market savvy.

Is appreciation for design greater today?

The companies that appreciate and embrace design have always been there. But over the past decade, many companies have discovered that attention to the nurturing of design giving design a seat at the big table, not just hanging it on the end of a process as a decoration could be converted into a strong business advantage. It's not a matter of strategic advantage anymore, it's a matter of survival. Companies rise and fall based upon their ability to design for a customer base.

Everything is designed today. We're surrounded, immersed, in what is essentially a purposely designed environment. Whereas design used to be a rarefied, esoteric option-thing, the culture today is all designed. The highest expression in design now is to un-design stuff. We've got a phenomenon out here called the Anti-Mall, where a bunch of hip investors said, "Let's just do something down and dirty and grunge. Make coffee shops, hangouts, video arcades and so forth." It's designed within an inch of its life. But it's not in the same design idiom as late corporate modernism.

So why is design being embraced more today?

There seems to be greater recognition that design input is what makes the difference in product success. Kawamoto-san, the recently retired CEO of Honda, musing about the landscape of the world automotive industry, once said to me, "Our manufacturing abilities are coming closer together, our R&D efforts are closer together, our ability to engineer is closer together. In the future, the only distinguishing characteristic in our industry will be design." Within Honda and other automotive companies using a predominantly design-driven product development strategy, there is the sense that design is the key differentiator. The customer can't tell them what he wants; only whether he likes something put in front of him. It takes a uniquely tuned design sensibility and a trusting executive management to identify a market that's about to emerge.