4 Comments

A response from Mark McGuinness at wishfulthinking.co.uk:

Every single manager, director, consultant and development professional I’ve interviewed has said that conversation and interpersonal interaction are essential to the creative process. One of the themes that has come out of the research for me is the idea of conversation as a creative meta-medium, where new connections and ideas emerge that would never have occurred to individuals working in isolation (or with their headphones on).

So should design studios ban iPods? That might be a bit extreme, but just as some companies have regular ‘no e-mail’ days, maybe there’s a case for ‘no-iPod’ days, or a return to the communal office sound system.

What could be better for fuelling the creative tension on a Monday morning than a good old-fashioned squabble over who gets to put their tunes on the stereo?
 Patrick Burgoyne
2006-11-08 18:37:08

I agree in theory, but in practice offices can be so noisy! I had someone actually whistling today.
Neil
2006-11-08 19:03:27

when i want to talk to other people and discuss stuff i go to a pub. when i want/must finish some work (and that is why we have a studio) i use iPod.

simple as that.
dinash
2006-11-09 17:03:36

There are several good reason why designers wear headphones:

Open plan studios - try being creative when you're sat behind a jabbering project manager/account manager/financial director/receptionist/etc who is always on the phone talking about boring business matters.

Speakers - I've freelanced in a lot of studios and there's always one twit who thinks the rest of the open plan studio workforce wants to listen to their crap taste in 'trendy' music. And it's always the same music no matter which studio you go to. And setting up a computer to play music from anyones itune playlist doesn't work either. it's still the same crappy music. Often at such a volume that you can't think straight! No one wants to hear nu metal or hard techno from 9am in the morning!!!

other designers! - not all the conversation heard in studios is worth listening to. No one cares about your crappy drunk stories or what you got up to over the weekend.

Simple solutions:
- partition studios to keep each department separate.
- ban music played through speakers.
- sack designers who have nothing better to do than go to the pub after work(every night in some cases) and talk about the stupid things they got up to whilst drunk.
graham
2007-07-04 20:51:37