Success Criteria: What Does It Mean To Be Successful Designer?

Publications in the industry core periodicals, participation in tradeshows, awards in various contests, collaboration with famous brands and high market demand to the products – which of those indicators are the most suitable to measure one’s success as a designer, and what does it mean to be ‘the successful designer’ in general? We decided to discuss the concept of success and its criteria with young, but already well-established designers.

Kirill and Elena Cheburashkindesigners, associate professors jointly holding the Furniture Design Department chair at the Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Industry 

In our opinion, the successful designer is the one, whose products are popular and demanded on the market, to begin with. Other attributes of success are applicable to designer depending on the specific genre he or she works in. For collectable design adepts, these are publications in mass media, participation in prestige tradeshows and long-term contracts with reputable galleries. For industrial designers, the success is measured by a number of products launched into serial production, awards at the international professional contests and collaboration with famous global brands. For interior designers, success is also measured in terms of media exposure and trade contest awards. Oh, sure, regardless of the specific design genre or field, another important success criteria for any designer is his or her personal satisfaction with the level of income earned as part of professional activity.

Dima Loginov designer

I would distinguish two essential success criteria for any designer. Those are the personal satisfaction with your work and the income you earn by doing it. If we talk about our still developing interior design market, where the social media likes, followers, contest awards and media exposure may be easily purchased via shady corrupted practices, the one can easily create a fake successful façade, but I dare assume that such façade is barely able to bring satisfaction to a normal designer. Here we won’t discuss the mental cases of those designers who pay for all these attributes and then start to believe in their so called ‘success’ by themselves, since we don’t have required medical qualification. But if we take a designer, who truly enjoys what he/she does and is satisfied with his/her income, then I would call it a prominent example of personal success regardless of how much people know his/her name or have heard about his/her products! That is to say that you don’t have to become a star to be successful.

MUSE ceramic tile for Nefrit Ceramic – one of the latest projects by Dima Loginov

Ekaterina Vagurina designer

The concept of ‘successful designer’ is highly subjective, so there does not and cannot exist any standard, unified criteria. Recently I had a pleasure to meet Yaroslav Rassadin, whom I personally see as successful and well-established designer. We had a conversation about almost the same matters as you just touched, so I asked him whether he considered himself to be successful, and how did he understand the concept of designer’s success in general. Then he gave me very well-thought and wise answer. Essentially, the success is highly subjective and individual matter, so everyone determines the successful criteria for himself/herself. The most import here is to understand what makes you feel happy and satisfied as a designer. 

For example, you are delighted when your pieces of work attract media attention and rejoice when you participate in tradeshows or win industry contests. But does it matter to you whether your designs receive practical implementation? Or after you gained satisfaction from media exposure and awards, you don’t mind them to remain on paper as renders and concepts hidden inside your desk?

Cheese Wheel lamp by ekaterina vagurina, was designed for Salone Satellite Moscow 2018

Or here is another option. You spend your days calm and quiet while working on your favorite job or taking freelance projects for individual customers, your name does not often get in the media, but you are happy to do what you do and feel satisfied because your ideas receive their real world implementation. When you stumble upon your products in everyday life or on a store shelf, you find a great pleasure in realizing that here is something that you conceived and designed by yourself. Maybe, the pictures of your items are not put on the magazine covers, but the most important is that you have created something useful and you know that this thing continues to live its own life, while bringing utility and aesthetic pleasure to other people.

Another criteria of success is the opportunity to stick with your favorite occupation and make living with it without a need for some outside employment or labor. But again, it’s still highly subjective, so it’s up for everyone for decide, which success criteria to apply to himself or herself personally.

Ivan Basov designer, co-founder of the brand Basmaсoncept

I see design as an ability to set clear goals, explore their essence and find the best suitable solution for every task. So, if we adopt such definition, then the success is the obtaining of expected positive result. But if we talk about our society in general, then regardless of specific occupation, the success, I guess, is measured by your relevance as professional and positive acceptance of the results of your efforts by other professionals in your industry, as well as the peer review journals.

Maxim Scherbakov the founder of Supaform studio

Like in any other field of human professional activity, the designer’s success is definitely measured by demand and relevance. It’s hard to be successful without finding your customer and your audience, although such cases are still not impossible. As for me personally, the successful designer is, first of all, an intelligent designer. It is a person with developed and well-though attitude, clear position, unique style and modus operandi, to put it in crude terms. If a designer is able to come up with interesting thoughts and express them in a fine way, sooner or later such designer will become successful. The success cannot be measured exclusively in monetary value, although money is surely one of the important equivalents of one’s success and wellbeing.

Project by Maxim Shcherbakov and Supaform Disused, objects were exhibited at the Milan design week, at the Ventura Future exhibition

Maria Anisimova-Karasik designer, co-founder of the brand PlayPly

I guess that the successful object designer is the one, whose products are sold. Tradeshows, contests, et cetera are, of course, important success criteria, but if we are talking about industrial designer, about a  person how develops functional objects for other people, then sales volumes are the ultimate indicator of success. I’m pretty sure that any products needed by people will be eventually implemented. Sooner or later, someone will start manufacturing and selling them, so the value of good design immediately becomes obvious. Quite a different story is when someone develops something that despite being considered cool by design community, is not sold well, which means that such product is not demanded and relevant.  

Somewhat surprisingly, the same rule is also applicable to the collectable design. Sure, in such case the expert opinion and good acceptance of item by industry experts is highly appreciated, but at the same time the collectable design objects are not intended to gather dust at the warehouse as well. They should be sold, sure, on the somewhat smaller scale, but for a completely different price. 

When talking about product relevancy and market demand, I must admit, and probably no one would argue, that today there are plenty of laughably bad products that are sold and considered popular. But it is already a different matter. I believe that the ultimate purpose of design is to educate the consumer about good taste, so if a designer offers really good and high-quality products, communicates his/her own ideas, instead of blindly following mainstream fashion trends, such designer eventually will be popular and successful.

Dmitry Samygin designer

Successful designer is a popular one, since the success is always measured by public recognition. Major manufacturers are willing to sign contracts with you, the customers want to buy products you have designed. For me, it is highly important to see that people find pleasure in using my items in their everyday life. The more successful you are, the more other industry players, such as manufacturers, periodicals and galleries, start to pay attention to your creative carrier. So these are the objective indicators of success, but there is also more personal interpretation of success concept based on continuous self-improvement and creative search. If we take a look at the history of design or at the iconic objects, then we'll see that there exists a kind of specific hierarchy even within a high-quality design segment. Today it’s barely possible to predict which items from our current diverse assortment will eventually become iconic, but it is going to be a real ultimate success for their authors.

On the cover: Banana lamp by Basmaсoncept