Can Anyone Be a Designer? Amateurs in Fashion Culture

Abstract

This article offers an analytical perspective on the implications of recent media evolutions for the conventional roles of the designer, with a particular emphasis on the changing relation between amateur and professional design in fashion culture. The article builds on the recent media studies literature on the intensification of media communications and the deeper transformations-mediatizationsof many areas in business and society. There is already extensive literature on the mediatization of finance, politics, food, and religion, for instance, but how is the process playing out in fashion? And what are the implications of this process for designers and design education? The article argues that media have become a key context for understanding the changing dynamics between professionals and amateurs and the evolution of more distributed forms of design creativity. The article is a conceptual paper that begins by situating the evolution of amateur design in theories of media and modernity to offer a theorization of amateur design and to establish an analytical perspective from which core aspects of the changing amateur/ industry divide are illustrated in analytical sections. Among the examples are the online platform Etsy and the T-shirt company Threadless. The conclusion puts the findings of the case studies into perspective and points to a future where new generations of designers and design educators approach and strategically manage these new relationships and distributed forms of creativity.

Together we create value: a study of a crowdsourcing community

“…This finding echoes previous studies that considered social capital (i.e. possessing a bridging position) as an indicator of knowledge sharing or learning outcomes (Dawson, 2008;Holt and Mackinney-Valentin, 2015). Our further comparison of bridging actors across the networks suggested that they were critical in dispersing diverse value creation resources to other members in the community.…”

“…Kavanaugh et al (2005) found that people who bridge between subgroups have higher levels of community participation, involvement, and confidence in their community's ability to work together. The social capital was considered an essential element for amateurs to acquire skills and become designers via their participation in their online communities (Holt and Mackinney-Valentin, 2015).…”