The word brand is much in the news these days. The frequent use isn’t particularly new, but it’s not letting up. It seems that brands are a bigger part of how we think of our world now. It wasn’t always this way, and, as the concept of brands has developed, our understanding of them and use of the concept, have changed as well.

It seems that the word and its attendant idea derive from the practice of cowboys searing their marks into the flanks of calves, on the 19th-century Texas plains. How else were they to identify their own property when their produce was largely undifferentiated? Young calves, after all, look very much alike as they run to hide in the brush.

In the case of the cowboys, the purpose was to identify the owner. It is likely that the products, the calves now grown into cows andsteers, were not qualitatively different from ranch to ranch. It is unlikely that buyers sought one brand in preference to another.

Quality, not quantity

So there has been a big shift in how the word brand is used. We know it is now intended to identify quality (or various discrete qualities) rather than quantity. How did this happen?

For a maker to identify his products with some mark is hardly new. It is usually said to have arisen with the start of the Industrial Revolution, in the 19^th century, but I suspect the practice has been around as long as makers have organized their making in such a way as to increase their volume and sales.  I have seen ancient Greek oil lamps, as identical as wheel-thrown objects can be, marked with a distinct stamp, or brand, showing they have all come from the same source. Stradivarius was signing his violinsthrough 1720. This might have been simple vanity, the way Sunday painters dutifully sign their work without hope of eventual appreciation, but I doubt it. A maker, serious about his business, might wish to claim ownership, or authorship, because that act wouldconfer extra value to the object produced. Not all makers are equal, so why not push for a marketing advantage?

Marketing as an entity

What is surprising is how many manufactured articles have been anonymous. The generalized notion that value can be generated by the identification of the maker is comparatively new. When a handful of western European nations took to transforming themselves into manufacturing economies, they sought captive markets for their wares. Hence the scramble for colonies. At that time, goods were often identified with  their country of origin, not the individual maker. French lace. English blankets. And so on. They dominated their dominions as countries, not as corporations.

With the post-war collapse of the colonial structure, individual corporations have been forced to do their own marketing, and brand  identification has proven to be a powerful tool in achieving this. I think what is most remarkable is just how successful this concept hasbeen. All travelers know they will find the same products to be available, regardless of where in the world they are.

It seems we are now in a new era of colonization, but this one is of brands. The world’s top brands remain overwhelmingly American, which is not surprising. America is the top country after all, by many standards. What is surprising, though, is after that how mixed the list becomes. Japan and Germany certainly dominate the auto industry. Italy and France top the luxury goods. Finland’s Nokia is the largest cell phone maker. And so on.

Eager colonies

Developed countries retain some advantages, even though manufacturing may no longer be one of them, and I think that advantage is education. The dominant international brands establish the dominant international style. They set the aesthetic and visual standards. They do this with their own educated designers and marketers. Collectively, they are the alpha males, so to speak. Theirs is the visualDNA that gets passed along. Countries that do not have the same level of education, confidence and capitol structures embrace and follow this leadership. As well as consuming it, they imitate it with their own manufacturing and novice brands. They seem to be anxious not to be left out, and not to remain at the bottom of this pack’s social order. The foreign DNA is embraced, absorbed and replicated.

It’s a (mostly) peaceful takeover of the world. Neo colonization via brands. Who would have guessed?

Paul Epp is an emeritus professor at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.

When fishermen get together, they’ll probably talk about fish, fishing, and the pleasures thereof. When designers get together, there’s a pretty good chance that, at some point, they’ll swap stories about clients that were reluctant to pay. Why are so many clients loath to meet their commitments to their designers?

One obvious answer is that a reluctance to pay for something that is not proven is both natural and almost inevitable. Even we designers are reluctant to buy a pig in a poke. To mix metaphors, we want to kick the tires, and take it for a spin before we separate ourselves from our hard-earned dollars. This is one reason why tradeshows have enjoyed so much success. There are many ways to expose a market to a product, but an opportunity to actually have a real visual and tactile experience of what we’ve seen in the media is very alluring.

What is ‘real’ work?

Part of what we do, as professional designers, is to project the nascent reality of our designs in as realistic a way as possible. We produce photorealistic renderings, maquettes, models, prototypes and so on, all in our pursuit of making the not-yet-real as real as possible. Unfortunately for us, though, our clients seldom have the same degree of imagination or even ability to “read” our presentations in a way that allows them to see our work as we see it. So they may be reluctant to buy in.

Another answer, although less obvious, is likely to be a bigger factor, and that is the poorly understood nature of intellectual property. What is protected, when intellectual protection is sought, is the manifestation of an idea. But it is really the idea that we seek protection for. The very idea that ideas can be property is a bit of a stretch for many people, especially those that are not in the idea business. Ideas are not even tangible, until we make them so, so how can they be property?

All of us, designers or not, produce ideas effortlessly. This may lead some to doubt that what can be obtained without effort is deserving of being compensated for. But what distinguishes those of us who are designers — that is those of us who are in the business of the production of ideas — is that we have trained ourselves to generate a specific type of idea and to improve the chances that these ideas are useful and valuable.

Ideas require investments, too

This training came at a cost and it alone represents a considerable investment on our parts. And then, the time and effort we devote to the generation of ideas, on behalf of our clients, is real and skilled work, however lacking in perspiration we may appear to be.

It is the idea that ideas can and should be eligible for protection that is the great intellectual leap that much of the wealth of our civilization rests upon. It was this perception, in the United Kingdom, that caused the Industrial Revolution to flourish there in ways that it did not elsewhere. It is the expectation that ideas can be protected that is behind the explosion of ideas that created our digital world.

The ownership of ideas ought to be respected. Our commercial well-being, both personal and general, rests on this. Piracy, cracking, swapping and sharing, and the other cute words that we use to hide behind when we steal may not have brought our engines of industry to a halt yet, but the harm can be felt. We designers know this because it is from people like us that this theft occurs. And we fail to be placated when our clients make a slight change and then claim that, since the idea is no longer the same, the ownership isn’t either.

There is a final reason that we might experience difficulty in getting paid and, in a way, it encompasses the other two as well. And that is that there are a lot of people in business who are, quite simply, assholes. But that’s another topic.

Paul Epp is an emeritus professor at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design Department.

Objects exist for many reasons, but most of them are created for the use to which they can be put. They are a means to an end. They are our tools. Our contemporary tools serve our contemporary lives: cell phones, tablets and laptops, flat screens. When the use is frequent and the outcome critical, we appraise our tools the most carefully.

This is very evident in the building trades, for instance. When you make your living by your screw-gun driver, you will want the best combination of torque, long battery life, low weight, balance and grip that a non-extortionist price will buy. If you only drive a drywall screw now and then, you will probably make your purchasing decision differently.

For those that have a ‘special interest’, the same scrutiny of objects takes place. If you are a fly-fisherman, for instance, you will know a great deal about lines and lures and rods (I don’t). You may even claim that you don’t know anything about design, but given even a small chance, you can hold forth at length on the minutiae of your tackle.

“Professionals” is one way we define or differentiate those that make their living from their specific set of tools (and skills). Chefs, as another example, will care more about the balance of their knives, their weight, their ability to hold an edge and so on, than most of us do. Marketers know this, and there are often ‘professional’ lines of products to complement the regular offerings.

But there are reasons to be cautious here, for tricks can be played. Most of us can be gullible, at least at times. I know I can be, but I’ve learned some things along the way. One early lesson came to me in design school, when a prominent manufacturer of tools came for a show-and-tell. One model of hammer was much more expensive than the others. I asked why, anticipating that it had been made from a better quality of steel. But no, it came from the same forging as all the others. It had just received the most polishing. It was brighter and dearer, but not really better. The benefit to its maker was that it returned the highest profit margin, from those dazzled by shiny things.

Only the people that use tools critically are really able to appraise them. To my mind, one of the biggest problems of design and one of its greatest challenges, is that the people who design (those professionals like me) usually are not really familiar with the tools that they may be called on to design. It’s easy to be arrogant and to think that your (our) specialized training singularly equips us to see and understand. But it may not. Another lesson from my design school involved the design of the handle for a backsaw. I did my research, ergonomic studies, clay models, prototypes etc., just as I had been trained to do, but when I showed the sleek and polished final model to our wood workshop technician, I got my real critique. He, being polite, said gracious things about my efforts, but then said that as far as he was concerned, the rather mundane handle of his old backsaw was hard to improve on (the very handle we had been challenged to improve). He noted that my version, which fit me perfectly, was the wrong size for his much bigger hands. As well, he showed me how he used his saw: like this and like that. The round handle allowed him to adjust his hands position without compromise. The ridges on the turning gave him just the right amount of grip. He used the tool and knew what it should be, in a way that I, as a designer, had little insight into.

I’m often reminded of this lesson when I review the results of industrial design competitions. There are often new designs for tools. It turns out that I may have spent quite a bit of time on the working end of some types of tools and this allows me to make considered judgments on them. There are often deficiencies and anomalies to spot and I suspect that in the categories where I lack experience, the same truths apply. Only the people who really use tools know what is crucial to them. Internet research doesn’t do it.

I think that it would look well on designers to adopt a bit more humility when it comes to tools and to do their research ‘in the field’. There is more to making a good tool than to improving its polish.

Paul Epp is an emeritus professor at OCAD University in Toronto, and former chair of its Industrial Design department.

Value is a word that is worth reflecting on. In fact, it’s more central to our lives than we are generally aware. Usually, we use this word in reference to economics. When it comes to buying or selling things, there is a possibility that cost can be accurately established. The seller determines the price, however arbitrary it might be.

But value remains the possession of the buyer. If something is valuable enough to you, you will try to get it. Conversely, if the value isn’t there, for you, then you pass by. For designers, engaged in the production of things, or even services, this equation is critical. Great attention can be paid to controlling cost and great care can be exercised in determining a price, but if the designer has not created value, then the whole enterprise is futile. And determining what might be valuable to another is an interesting challenge, and a target that is easily missed.

During my work as an educator, I had plenty of opportunities to consider value. In fact, I eventually concluded that teaching is essentially an exercise in the transmission of values. We, the teachers, engage in all sorts of stratagems to convince our students, however subtly, that certain knowledge is valuable, certain facts are valuable, certain skills are valuable. We set up certain things as being good (correct) and others as being less so. We reinforce this with exercises and eventually examinations where we have the opportunity for an ultimate reinforcement of our claims. Seeing it this way makes it feel, to me, as a very weighty responsibility, and I guess it is. The students go on to use their newly acquired distinction of values as a guide for their lives, and eventually, to pass along to others. Whew!

Designers learn a hierarchy of values, whether at school, or just by bumbling along, making mistakes and learning from them. Even though I went to school, most of what I learned I acquired the other way, variously known as the school of hard knocks. And I’m not knocking that school either. One of my favourite observations about teaching (or learning) is that which hurts, teaches (it sounds better in Latin). We value the absence of hurt a lot, and learn to avoid it, if we can. Our mistakes are part of the foundation of the structure we make of our values. And this is one reason that experience is valuable to designers and is a critical component of what makes them valuable to others.

When we design, we are constantly making decisions and we base our decisions on what we consider to be valuable. When I was only teaching part-time and concurrently running a design studio, a former student who was now an employee made the observation that he was learning a lot more working for me and more quickly than when he was a student. And I think that was because he was observing a value structure in action. I would guide his work based on what I considered to be good, or accurate, or valuable, and I would do this quickly and with confidence. A problem with schools is that the work is theoretical. It is different when there are real consequences and there is less room for argument.

A second way we use the word value, is in the realm of philosophy and, in particular, ethical philosophy. Here it is concerned with the right course of action and with regard to the eventual outcomes. Actions are treated a bit like objects, with values attached to them. This may concern the avoidance of pain, or the increase of pleasure, or joy, or peace or any of the other abstracts we value. Values may even be concerned with the benefit to others. Sometimes our ethical structure of values will be described as the underpinnings of our character.

In fact, these two ways of using the word value, or values, are not that dissimilar. We make our decisions based on what we value, what we find to be valuable. Our values are who we are. This may be especially true of teachers and designers, but it holds for all of us regardless. An important reflection of our values is our sense of gratitude. The more we find to be valuable, the more opportunities we have to be grateful. And as I’ve learned, a grateful life is better.

Paul Epp is professor emeritus at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.