Professional discourse and professional identities at cross-purposes: Designer or entrepreneur?

Abstract

What happens when designer dreams meet business reality? This paper illustrates how a group of professional designers experienced emotional tensions and conflicts of personal and professional identity during an eight-week voluntary course on business and entrepreneurship for the creative professions. The designers' discourse, which revolved around ideals of commitment towards artistic integrity, aesthetics and design clashed with the hard core discourse of business which highlighted practical concerns relating especially to market considerations and the necessity of adapting designs to existing means of production. Intellectually, the designers agreed on the need to develop business skills to improve their financial situation and enhance their employability. Emotionally, however, their choice of discourse, metaphors and framing strategies reflected a series of professional and personal conflicts and struggles of identity.

     The study illustrates the oscillating nature of designers' identity negotiations between business and design but offers no one-size-fits-all solution to business training for the creative professions. The data reflect that identity negotiations do not take the form of a liniar process in which logic, material concerns and business sense will eventually prevail. To facilitate the potential incorporation of business thinking into the professional identity of designers, the data indicate that business related training targeting the creative professions would benefit from paying increased attention to the influence of professional discourse and sensemaking patterns on the construction of personal and professional selves.