Beyond Participatory Design

Abstract

This article examines a large-scale brand collaboration between the Indonesian Graphic Designers Association (ADGI) and local shoe brand Compass as a case of distributed professional creative practice mediated by a professional association. Diverging from conventional participatory design frameworks, which center community or end-user involvement, this study positions the collaboration as a form of collective brand authorship: a practice in which institutional mediation, structured creative autonomy, and professional negotiation together produce both aesthetic diversity and shared brand meaning. The project, initiated to commemorate Compass’ 25th anniversary, engaged twenty-five professional graphic designers who produced twenty-five distinct shoe designs within a negotiated creative framework. Through semi-structured interviews with key participants and systematic visual analysis of all twenty-five design artifacts, this qualitative case study identifies three interconnected dimensions of the collaboration: institutional mediation as a mechanism for structuring creative participation and legitimating professional authority; distributed authorship as a practice that generates aesthetic diversity within a coherent brand identity framework; and collective meaning-making as a strategy through which individual design narratives converge into a shared brand story. Crucially, the study also examines the asymmetries of power and creative authority that emerge within such collaborations, including the negotiation between design idealism and commercial production constraints. The findings contribute to the broader discourse by offering a Global South perspective on how professional associations function as social infrastructure within creative economies. This study proposes that the ADGI–Compass collaboration model represents a replicable socio-professional framework applicable to creative industry ecosystems beyond Indonesia.