INDUSTRY OR SELF-MANAGEMENT? REDEFINITION OF THE PROFESSIONAL LABOUR OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS ACCORDING TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-ENTREPRENEURSHIPS PRODUCTIONS

Abstract

In the last years, the growth of experiences linked to the development of productive entrepreneurships have generated transformations related to the way of labour insertion in the market. This is the case of designers, who have oriented their professional labour in a search of a development of an autonomous job, not subjected to dependence in their labour relations.        

This search is configured into a context of high visibility of the success of ‘independent design’, principally produced in the last decade in our country.

In the case of industrial designers, the election of a self-managed job rises some questions related to the ‘industrial’ orientation that discipline promotes in the University, setting different instances, as well: on the one hand, the necessity to incorporate, into the career, a formation oriented to self-production, and, on the other hand, the situation of ambiguity that emerges into the identity of the professionals, whose ‘industrial’ formation is opposed to their multiple insertion’s reality. This situation certainly influences the identity configuration of such professionals.           

In this sense, the article seeks to make this problem visible. It is the result of a study performed for a doctoral thesis oriented to study the labour insertion of industrial designers who graduated in the University of Buenos Aires.

The methodological approach was based on a qualitative strategy and data is product of in depth-interviews applied to industrial designers from that University.

This work proposes to contribute to the construction of knowledge on a matter not explored at all in the social sciences field as design is, and specifically the discipline of Industrial Design, in order to inquire about labour insertion of these professionals, who became relevant actors of the cultural production in the contemporary society.