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The Design Objective organization is a non-profit membership organization created to improve and support the development of design and designers in T&T.

The organization was formed by seven founders, Agyei Archer, Melanie Archer, Ayrïd Chandler, Marlon Darbeau, Debbie Estwick, Gareth Jenkins and Joshua Lue Chee Kong, and will be hosting an informal chat with designers on March 16.
Agyei Archer said the organization is needed to get designers together as a unified group of professionals and also to provide help to designers as happens in other countries. “Design associations allow a place for fellowship for designers, but also a lot of their focus is around helping, so they publish documents on doing your job better, pricing and navigating the legal system, etc. It’s really questions like those that we want to start addressing, because we realize we have a lot more freelancers in T&T than in other countries and they need some help as well, since part of the problem many freelancers have is that there really isn’t anyone for them to reference, not necessarily for their creative output but the way that they handle business.”
Melanie Archer said the founders realize they cannot presume to speak for all designers in T&T, which is why they are hoping that people come to the informal event so “we can get an idea what people want and need. We’re trying to figure out how we can make alliances with other types of designers. We want to suss out what are the tools, what are the assets, and then we’ll launch later in the year and people can sign up for membership but for now we’re just trying to understand what we should be doing.”
Agyei said he believes the graphic design portion of the creative industry isn’t respected because it’s immediately accessible in terms of software and because people don’t think about it as being valuable because it’s everywhere. “Those challenges make it hard for people to understand why things cost as much as they do at times. I don’t think it’s within our purview to dictate rates, so it’s really a matter of gathering information and doing some sampling so we can come up with average rates.”
Designers are often faced with financial issues due to this lack of respect for the industry, Melanie said. “This is why we’re attempting to formalize things like prices and structures so that potential clients have a better understanding as to how things work, because we’re solving problems visually, we’re not just making things look pretty. We struggle with people paying us sometimes and just an accurate assessment and understanding of the industry’s value.”
She also said that the founders want people to understand what good design looks like. “Part of Design Objective will be an archive where we honour some of the pioneers of graphic design in Trinidad whose work is really difficult to find anywhere. We want to create a space for learning and it’s very important to us to set that standard in terms of what is good design. We all want T&T to design with greater empathy, thoughtfulness and caring in order to improve quality of life and social development.”
The event takes place on March 16 at 65 Carlos Street, Woodbrook, beginning at 6 pm. For further information, find Design Objective on Facebook and go to their website http://www.designobjective.org/.