They were going to tear it down,” says Linda Lewis, founding president of the Design Exchange in Toronto, a national educational centre, dedicated to the promotion, exhibition and preservation of design.
“So a group of us back in the mid-80s decided that we, as concerned citizens, just had to do something.”
The building was the former Toronto Stock Exchange on Bay Street, completed in 1937, and considered an architectural and technological marvel in the streamlined moderne style. After saving the building, the group saw the need to preserve Canada’s design heritage, eventually opening the Design Exchange there in 1994 as a cultural design centre and museum.
“The old art deco building speaks design. We knew this was the place for us, right in the middle of Canada’s financial district,” says Ms. Lewis, the retired chair of Ryerson University’s School of Fashion
The Design Exchange works worldwide, producing and distributing brochures, catalogues and magazines that celebrate Canadian products and design services, but now Ms. Lewis wants to take it to another level. As co-leader of the National Design Policy Committee, Ms. Lewis is working on establishing the kind of formal design policy she believes Canada desperately needs to compete globally.
The initiative, led by the Design Exchange, in partnership with universities, business associations and organizations across Canada for presentation to the federal government, would affect the way design services and the use of design are embodied throughout our economy and culture.
“Unlike most nations in the world who promote their country’s designs and designers, Canada doesn’t have a design policy,” Ms. Lewis says. “Other countries like Italy, Korea and Japan have major governmental organizations that go around the globe advertising the products of their design industries or their businesses that invest in design. That’s not true in Canada. We’re it.”
According to Ms. Lewis, policy decisions need to be made at the federal government level in order to make this possible.
“It can’t just be this group of citizens who say that design is a good thing,” Ms. Lewis says. “Government has to take some responsibility.”
Ms. Lewis also proposes redistribution changes in funding formulas at the provincial level to support more university design programs, as well as tax credit programs like the film industry has in order to encourage investment in design. Currently, she feels design has been largely ignored by Canadian policy makers.
“Look at Canada’s desire to have a national innovation strategy,” Ms. Lewis says. “Strangely enough, design is not included [in the Government of Canada’s innovation strategy], although design is one of the main forces that allows innovation to occur.”
That lack of official recognition is something Ms. Lewis sees as a huge stumbling block when it comes to business embracing design. Yet the figures from Statistics Canada show that companies that invest in design are profoundly more effective and more successful than ones who don’t, Ms. Lewis says. That’s the same for small business as well as big business. The investment may be smaller in proportion to a larger company, she maintains, but the effect on the bottom line is essentially equal.
“We have research and development funding in Canada, but there’s no design funding for anything,” Ms. Lewis says. “Design is the bridge between creativity and innovation that’s key for business success. On the outside, it distinguishes you from any other business of your type. On a larger scale, it makes you competitive within a much larger realm.”
Some of her favourite design success stories are the BlackBerry designed in Waterloo, Ont., by Todd Wood, vice president of industrial design at Research In Motion, an “exquisite set of woodworking tools” by the Lee Valley company in Ottawa, and Toronto’s Umbra, a manufacturer of housewares available at more than 25,000 retailers in 75 countries. Umbra started out making window shades in 1979 but now produces all kinds of products using aluminum and plastics in an innovative way.
“Toronto has the third largest design industry in North America and that’s a major export for Canada,” Ms. Lewis says. “And it’s not just ‘things’ we’ve developed and are selling. It’s services – such as interior design for department stores and hotels, industrial design, clothing design, computer and animation systems – that are used worldwide.”
Ms. Lewis says that part of the problem in Canada is how design is perceived, particularly by business. She explains the very word “design” is confusing because it’s a number of things beyond how something looks. Essentially, she defines design as a systematic process that one can follow – from identifying a problem, analyzing the potential uses of an idea and then developing it to a desired goal.
That looseness in how design is defined is something that Ana Serrano, director of the CFC (Canadian Film Centre) Media Lab, a world-renowned new media research, training and production facility in Toronto, takes issue. If we’re going to develop a national design policy, she says more rigour is needed around what is meant by design and what elements a national design policy would cover.
“The word ‘design’ is overused and applied to just thinking, so if you’re making anything, you’re ‘designing’ it,” Ms. Serrano says. “So you can be ‘designing’ everything in a way.”
Ms. Serrano suggests that Canada look at jurisdictions such as Britain and Finland which have had thoughtful conversations around design and have broken down what a national design policy entails.
“Whether that’s looking at design education or design from the point of view of business or the idea of design as a branding exercise that brands our national capacity to be innovative, there are a number of different pieces around what design could mean,” Ms. Serrano says. “We need to know how design fits into all of those spaces.”
