“I think chaos is the world’s way of keeping us honest and forcing us to use creativity to evolve.”
The Nigerian creative economy is vast yet untapped. It is potentially a multibillion-dollar industry with an estimated figure yet unknown due to the lack of proper organisation and documentation. Looking at the numbers and projections, we can get a glimpse. The music industry’s revenue has been projected to hit $50 million by 2020. According to Nairametrics, Nollywood contributed about N270 billion to Nigeria’s GDP as far back as 2016 and is estimated to generate $1billion in revenue by 2020. The Nigerian fashion industry accounts for about $4.7 billion of the over $2.5 trillion global worth and according to PWC the advertising industry was projected at generating $450 million in 2019. Even with these numbers, a lot of sectors within the creative industry are still disorganised and unaccounted for.
The creative industry is a major driver of socio-economic, cultural, and sustainable change all over the world and Nigeria cannot afford to neglect this sector in its bid to become more prosperous and emerge as a global economic power and a catalytic hub for development in Africa. This depends solely on three things; Vision, Creativity, and Execution (implementation).
EVERYTHING CREATED WAS PRECONCEIVED
”Vision is the ability to imagine how a country, society, industry, etc. could develop in the future and plan for this”. Cambridge Dictionary Online
Everything created started with a vision. An artist would sink in his own imaginations using lines and shapes to scamp his idea before finishing it up with colours and details. A fashion designer would have to illustrate his ideas before cutting the cloth to sew. A footwear designer must sketch his designs first on paper then on a last and have a mood board to know the type and cost of materials to use. In-fact some scriptwriters or movie directors have taken this discussion of vision to another pedestal by creating movies based on a future they have imagined and they are coming to pass: Back to the Future, Contagion, Black Mirror and Some episodes of The Simpsons that predicted Donald Trump’s election and his victory are just a few examples.
Let me digress a bit and put things into perspective.
In 2009, Vision 20: 2020 was conceived. According to the blueprint, the vision statement was “By 2020, Nigeria will have a large, strong, diversified, sustainable and competitive economy that effectively harness the talents and energies of its people and responsibly exploits its natural endowments to guarantee a high standard of living and quality of life to its citizens.”
It was a vision that was to make Nigeria one of the 20 largest economies in the world, consolidating its leadership role in Africa and establishing it as a significant player in the global economic and political arena. Well, the year is 2020 and with over 200 million people more than half of whom are young, Nigeria is the poverty capital of the world. As if that is not bad enough, it is very difficult to do business, global competitiveness is low, corruption perception is high, and the country is the third most terrorized country in the world. These problems did not accrue overnight. So, it’s either there was a significant error with the blueprint or the implementation strategy was just wrong.
A few comments and feedback about the Vision 2020 as reported by Ebuka Onyeji, Premium Times, Jan 2020 follows below:
“Nigeria needs to define steps needed to be taken to meet the basic needs of her citizens and not hinge its development plans on GDP figures which do not impact on current realities on the ground,
“The country’s economic plans do not have the ability to address the unique needs of Nigerians at present.” ”
“The Nigerian Government’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) prioritises physical capital over human capital”.
“The most important choice Nigerian leaders can make is to maximise the country’s greatest resource, which is the people.”
“There was a serious disconnect between the visionaries and the citizens. Also, the corporate citizens did not buy into it, the political class did not believe in it because they did not develop it, it’s more of a technical document and they don’t even understand it.”
EVERYTHING MADE WAS DESIGNED
An idea needs a detailed blueprint to be well-executed the same way it was conceived. Digital Product Designers design wireframes to have an overview of the entire platform or product before designing a prototype to test and an eventual product they launch. An automobile manufacturer or a civil engineer would follow a blueprint that shows the various parts of the project, the material types to be used, and how it would all come together before proceeding to a prototype and then an eventual product for a user to buy.
One of the major reasons why some sectors within the creative industry are not running at their full capacities and potentials is that like the Nigerian Government, they don’t have a thorough design and implementation. Nollywood is the second-largest producer of movies in the world after Bollywood, but they don’t generate as much as Hollywood or Bollywood. Except for a few producers and directors that insist on quality because they aim for renowned platforms like Netflix, Nollywood turns out movies in quantities and not quality. A lot of Nollywood movies lack good story structures, comprehensive scripts, mood boards, and storyboards to illustrate the character design, costume and set designs, camera angles, lighting, moods, etc.
In another category, footwear designers copy and paste existing designs and patterns and just change material types from leather to Ankara to Africanize it. Even though these sectors are on their path to innovation and growth, as innovation happens by doing, the players have to do better in thoughts, design, and implementation in order to attract the investments they deserve.
Design is mostly seen as an artistic expression, a graphical illustration of an idea, or the subjective visual interpretation of an imagination that must be ticked on a to-do list. Some believe when designers say design can change the world, they often mean using a poster or logo to change it but they actually mean using new ways to disrupt dated models, engage new and underrepresented audiences and improve lives.
Design is the creation of an experience, the process of the creation, how it is organized, and the outcome. It is a discipline at the core of innovation and changes toward a better and more sustainable future. Design can be an agent for sustainable change.
As a young graphic designer/art director in the advertising industry, I observed that the markets were filled with a lot of badly designed products and services. I realized that advertising and marketing couldn’t help to sell these badly designed products, so I decided to go discover how some of the best products, services, systems, and industries were made. The quest led me to the discovery of Design Thinking as a mindset and Human-Centered Design as a process which made me understand better the role of designers in this time and age.
DESIGN THINKING AND HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN
“Design thinking is a human-centered design approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”
According to IDEO, Human-Centered Design is a creative approach to problem-solving that starts with people and ends with innovative solutions that are tailormade to suit their needs. To understand what people really want, one must observe them and put oneself in their shoes to understand their pain points and how they truly feel to draw out insights that can be used for the design process.
The Vision 2020 simply failed because the most important part of the process (the Nigerian people) was not paid attention to. The overseers of the blueprint and its implementation were in total disconnect with the people and their needs. We can draw the same conclusion with the creative industry too. It is not at its full potential or capacity yet because most players within it don’t know and understand those, they are creating products and services for.
Designers should be able to figure things out from end to end with the capacity of leading evolutions in the future. They would play more leadership roles within organizations to achieve key business goals (design driven organizations outperform the S&P 500 by 219%). They should be empathic, question the state of things, challenge stereotypes, and pay close attention to human needs. These qualities combined with technology, data science, the internet of things, etc. are important in order to solve the challenges we encounter today.
As a creative person, start-up founder, entrepreneur, advocate for change, government official, etc., you must have a designer’s mindset in how you think, generate ideas, and implement them.
THE DESIGN THINKING MINDSET
Ask “What If?” – Invite unusual perspectives and seek opportunities to grow.
Optimism – Open your mind to reveal untapped potential.
Human Empathy – See the world through the eyes of others.
Critical Thinking – Critique your thinking.
Curiosity – Never stop exploring new frontiers in your mind.
Experimentation – Make ideas tangible and have the desire to fail fast and iterate often.
Collaborate – Don't just connect things, connect with people.
Experienced Focused – Building experiences that connect to a greater whole.
From experience, executing a project the way it was envisioned takes patience, grit, discipline, professionalism, and most times, collaboration and we need all these to arrive at our desired outcome.
In Conclusion, to be in business, you must understand that you do not create for yourself, you create and design for people. Observe them, care about them, and understand them to gather insights and create genuine solutions that they truly need and be pleased to pay for.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”
