In my opinion, simply, Florence does not engage in design for such as cultural city. Discussing this is quite important for my research because it relates to how I virtually ignored any integration of Florence’s design community (practicing studios, relevant research, history) in my curriculum design.
I was living in Florence for about five years. For the first year, I struggled to find the odd freelance job to carry me through the months. Luckily its a small city, I felt like a door to door salesman. Through friends, I finally landed a job for the Uffizi which gave me some publicity to find jobs easier. While like most cities, “word of mouth” rules the networking system for a freelance designer, in Florence the relationship and status you have with friends is the cue. For those of you who have visited the city, you will know that it is very old, and its foundation of its economy, other than tourism, was based through the fine arts and craft. Ah yes, beautiful but quite deceiving for the young North American graphic designer.
I’ve dubbed the city “never changing.” It is like most famous ancient european cities but its alarming rate of tourism and international students create a unique atmosphere for design. Observation: Florence lives on tourism. Tourists and students go to Florence to explore the ancient past in art and architecture (the Renaissance) Students mainly study in Florence to learn classical mediums, painting, drawing, ect. Businesses rely on tourism. Businesses keep the history of the city intertwined with their service/product.
The city is relatively small and their are a handful of design studios operating in the area. Most of these studios have established a monopoly with the larger companies in the area requesting design services. By talking to other Italian design students, most have told me that the turn over rate in the studios is very, very low and most studios when needing an extra hand in production leech on design students to work for no pay. (An internship in Florence) While I’m not suggesting that because the city is old their is no need for graphic design but what I am saying is that their is little room for growth. During my five years there I had to constantly explain to people and clients what is graphic design and what are the benefits. By the end I got so exhausted by the same questions I quickly stated ” you know advertising, poster, books and stuff” (In Italian of course) They understood that, barely. When the public university in Florence does not offer any sort of communication design program, other than electives, its no wonder their is a lack of understanding. Also, I found during the last years that many small print shops were offering “graphic design” services for as little as $15 per hour. I saw many potential clients go the the small print shop to get an (all-in-one) service or a friend who knew Photoshop. AHHHH! I can see why this creates a destructive design environment. Who will pay for the services of a graphic designer or communication designer when there are very few notable examples of the work in action.
Design symposiums: The city of Florence likes to think its great and modern by hosting “design trade-shows” I guess to keep up with their competition, Torino, Rome and Milan. Very few were good, other than offering key note superstar designers delivering another speech on creativity! Oh I’m ranting again. Back to the question.
Curriculum design:
While I believe I could have made a stronger effort to include whatever minimal design community there was in Florence at that time into my curriculum design thus creating a program more suitable for North American students (see assessment post), I feel that the unavoidable circumstances took the upper hand. A possible solution was to do some heavy research into what the studios in the area were doing and maybe create a link with practice and learning. This could have been expanded to a research component where students studied how practicing designers used research in their projects. All these “ifs” are great to reflect on but unfortunately I don’t see how it could have been possible to arrange within the time frame I had for the design of the new program. Now I believe that at least at an introductory level students were to be introduced to Italian graphic history such as the Futurists and then moved on to their play with typography, ect. While this may have given a technical and historical look into the Italian (Florentine) graphic design it would not fulfill the criteria of the integration of an practice-based research.