Designers compromise creativity to meet targets

By Stevie Emilia

JAKARTA (JP): In their work, designers depend mostly on creativity. But in facing the future's competition, many of them, like it or not, must compromise with the demand from producers and the market, leaving cultural aspects behind.

According to art designer Rini Chairin Hayati, a speaker at last week's Asia Pacific Design Conference '98, many designers can no longer enjoy the freedom to express their creativity.

Designers working for manufacturers, for instance, have to bow to certain restrictions while creating designs, such as limited production time, limited budget, affordable product prices and other constraints.

"Those designers have to sacrifice cultural values in their designs to meet the target," Rini told The Jakarta Post.

"But designers working for manufacturers are different from craft designers, who can still include cultural values in their work," she added.

The conference, held at the Jakarta Design Center, was titled Design and Regional Society in the 21st Century. It was organized by the Indonesia Design Center in cooperation with the Japan Design Foundation, and was opened by Minister of Cooperatives and Small Enterprises Adi Sasono.

Rini, who is in charge of an art program and craft division at Studio D23, a multidivision design studio in Bandung, West Java, joined a project conducted by the National Fund for Export Development in 1979 along with some designers from the Bandung Institute of Technology.

The project, which mainly used the skills of local craftspeople in Tasikmalaya, West Java, was intended to develop prototypes of goods to be exported abroad. Bamboo, which is known as a multipurpose plant, was among the material selected for development.

"In its development, a new kind of bamboo craft was introduced after taking into deliberation several considerations compared with traditional products, such as health and safety factors, suitability to urban living style, limited production time and uniformity of quality," Rini said.

The new bamboo crafts, ranging from household utensils to decorations, were then sold to urban people instead of just being used by the Tasikmalaya people.

The team of designers then tried to export the products to Japan but failed because the company which was to sell their products there, went bankrupt seven years ago.

Fortunately, another opportunity presented itself and for the past six months, they have started exporting to Japan again.

"The difference between our former exports to Japan is this time, we send a very small quantity of baskets," said Rini. Now, the team has its own agent in Japan to arrange orders for them.

But Rini and her team are not yet satisfied with the result.

Bamboo craft, she said, was just like any other craft, subject to a life cycle.

She said that when a product is first introduced to the market, it is relatively unknown but gradually, the market recognizes it and sales increase.

But after some time, the market becomes saturated and the sales slow down, she said.

And at that time, she said, a substitute craft, something new and more appealing to consumers, should be introduced to the market.

"Just like in the fashion world, we also have trends in handicrafts. The occurrence of these fashion trends implies that from time to time, we have to develop and launch new products," Rini said.

And designers, she said, must work harder in the future, thinking of how to keep up the spirit to create new products which have strong appeal to consumers. At the same time, the new products should be of good quality and strong cultural values.

"This is not a simple problem, it is a multidisciplinary problem that must be solved by a network of experts," Rini said.

But compromising their creativity with market demands is not the designers' only problem. At present, designers are also posed with another crucial problem: legal protection of their works.

"How far does the law protects the designer? After so much difficulty creating something new, someone with better financial support can flood the market with the same product at much cheaper prices," Rini said.

She said that if no legal protection was given to designers' works, it was feared that soon designers would not be interested in creating new products.

Minister Adi Sasono recognized the designers' problem, saying that it begins with a lack of understanding on the important role of design.

Some small and medium companies, he said, have felt the need for designs but cannot afford to pay designers. Instead, they preferred to copy other countries products, which then made multinational companies pursue them for violating copyrights, he added.

"These problems should be handled right away. Designers should anticipate matters by cooperating with industrialists, who do not have traders' mentality, and lawyers, to prepare legal protection for Indonesian designers," Adi said in his opening speech.