Designer gets kick out of audits

Consultant Ray Labone wants to give small firms better appreciation of design.

Assessing companies' design strength has been something of a revitaliser for design consultant Ray Labone.

He feels born again.

"I've been busy helping corporates brand themselves for many years now, but it's only through my involvement with Better by Design my passion for improving New Zealand's design ability has been well and truly aroused."

As his official T-shirt for the programme states: Now it's personal.

Wellington-based Labone, a founder of leading design firm Designworks, is one of the key people carrying out the design audits that are part of the Government's $12.5 million Better by Design initiative.

The programme aims to raise awareness of design and to see it adopted in mainstream commerce.

So far, five companies have had audits, assessing everything from vision and values to the structure of the design team, its product and brand proposition.

These include outdoor equipment and clothing company Macpac, hockey apparel company Obo, bedroom furniture manufacturer Design Mobel, Phil & Teds buggy makers and kayak manufacturer Current Craft Perception.

Labone said the process had shown him businesses had been held back by a belief in improvisation and a do-it-yourself mindset.

"We are a pioneer nation that's trying to make the leap to be an innovative nation.

"As pioneers, we're in love with the idea and the invention, but we haven't got the stomach for finessing our ideas."

He said although many products developed to fill a local niche were exported, they often failed to capture the same niche on a global scale.

This was reflected in the fact that although New Zealand was internationally recognised as an outdoors nation, it did not have a world famous outdoors brand.

"If Australia dominates the market for surf brands, why can't we do it with outdoor brands?

"We need more exemplar companies. It's a big concern our economy is largely driven by big commodity produced exporters and large corporate service providers, then [we have] a swag of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) making relatively little contribution to GDP.

"We need to lever that up and make them [design-led SMEs] much more of a force."

This will be addressed at Better by Design 2005, a conference aimed at providing practical design-led business advice to up-and-coming exporters, to be held in Auckland from March 29.

The three-day event will be headlined by international business guru Tom Peters and the chief executive of leading global design agency IDEO, Tim Brown.

"I think this will be something of a tipping point in terms of changing some long-held cultural mindsets," said Labone.