Lead bodies fail to lead to clients

If, as Lynda Relph-Knight suggests, packaging clients are looking to manufacturers rather than design consultancies for real innovation (Comment, DW 27 January), shouldn’t the official design bodies be doing something to remedy this?

The growth of structural packaging skills within packaging consultancies, for example, shows that designers are making a real effort to broaden their involvement with clients and provide a better service. And they are not the only ones trying to keep one step ahead of the game.

I get the impression that clients are still of the view that graphic designers are only capable of providing the expensive pretties and lack the ability for strategic thinking and technical expertise.

Shouldn’t the likes of the Chartered Society of Designers, the Design Business Association and, dare I say it, the new Design Council, be lobbying clients to tell them how design consultancy has changed – and continues to develop? And shouldn’t the CSD and DBA also be making more of an effort to encourage and train their members to update their consultancy skills?

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