Soma Design

Over at Sub­trac­tion, Khoi Vinh (Design Direc­tor of NYTimes.com) has a post on Great Num­bers, Not So Great Design. His basic point is that big­ger design stu­dios are not bet­ter, and that smaller stu­dios tend to be your best bet for good design. As a very small design shop here (two peo­ple!) I must of course agree. If my wife and I can’t com­mu­ni­cate and get in the flow with you, we have prob­lems larger than mere mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion! Here’s the leadin to Khoi’s article/rant, which I sug­gest you go read:

Let me admit a real prej­u­dice that I have, and maybe you can try to con­vince me that I’m wrong: it’s my belief that you just can’t get great design out of a design agency with a staff larger than a dozen or two. Design doesn’t scale well, in my opin­ion, or at least it doesn’t do so easily.

This craft, and what­ever pre­ten­sions to art it can pull off, rests so much on the effi­ciency of trans­fer­ring ideas from the brain to the hand. This means that in its ideal form, it works best when prac­ticed by a sin­gle per­son. The per­fect design staff is a sin­gle designer who can con­ceive of and exe­cute an idea from start to fin­ish — a straight shot from the right brain to the wrist — main­tain­ing the same coher­ent cre­ative vision throughout.

Of course, as an eco­nomic mat­ter, this is imprac­ti­cal. For design to work as a busi­ness, it almost always has to scale to some degree. The smaller the scale, though, the more effi­cient the prac­tice of design; trans­mit­ting ideas among a small num­ber of peo­ple is much more effec­tive than trans­mit­ting them among a large number.