The next 80 years of the Design Council (a letter from a friend)

The Design Council is selecting its new CEO and as a friend of the organisation (I’ve worked there twice, in 2005 as an intern and in 2022 as an interim Chief Design Officer) here are my thoughts on the challenges ahead.

Lessons from the past
Something that’s often forgotten was that The Design Council was a spin off of a war-time success story. The Utility scheme was set up by Hugh Dalton at the Board of Trade with the help of industrial designer Gordon Russell. Making affordable furniture accessible to families whose homes had been bombed wasn’t easy but they managed it. Managing to control the entire supply chain of everyday products made of a natural (and at risk) material would be impossible to do that quickly today. The scheme was eventually closed in 1952 but Russell was invited to stay involved in a new national mission:

In 1944, he joined Board of Trade discussions to establish a national body promoting higher standards of industrial design, leading to a significant post-war role. […]  He played a key role in launching the Council of Industrial Design in 1944 and was heavily involved in the successful 1946 Britain Can Make It exhibition, which attracted 1.5 million visitors. The next major event was the 1951 Festival of Britain, celebrating Britain’s heritage and future. Both Gordon and Dick Russell were integral to this event, with Dick designing the Lion and Unicorn Pavilion. In 1952, the Design Centre opened in London with Gordon as its leader, promoting British design worldwide and becoming a hub for the public, designers and manufacturers.

That blueprint survived the Thatcher years, the turn of the millenial and the austerity years. Up to a point even the Double Diamond can be seen as a tool for achieving better design outcomes in an industrial sense. But it seems to me that time has now passed. China now dominates global manufacturing and setting standards can no longer be done at a UK level alone. There is no design-specific instrument that governments of the last 20 years have needed to deploy to boost the economy. With the development of the service economy, you could say design became a minority contributor to the economy (at 5% of GVA in 2024).

Brexit has made things worse as it created a parallel central government activity that waits on the EU to develop a policy before making up its mind about the local flavour to adopt. As the Design Council launched its 2021 mission to Design for Planet, the government was busy developing its own version of GDPR, CE marking, IP laws just to keep up with its neighbours. Since then, Europe has led the charge on repairability, digital product passports, ESG reporting, waste management reporting, net zero policies and more.

The Design Council’s close connection to the Department of Business and Trade (as it’s now known) slowly faded to be replaced by the Department for Science, Technology and Innovation, the government’s hold-all for everything from life sciences to AI research. The 2025 allocation to the Department is generous, but that means DC is one of thousands of organisations competing for ministerial attention. As a charity (since the 2010 bonfire of the quangos) its financial footprint has also kept shrinking.

Now is a good time to consider the deep future of the organisation and whether a new blueprint can help it tell its story 80 years from now.

Here are 5 ideas for that blueprint:

• Stop ignoring Digital Design.
  Digital designers have no home right now. The British Computing Society and IET are totally disconnected from a workforce that powers the digital services we use daily. And then there’s AI which is on the tip of the tongue of most ministers (keep an eye on Colin Burns in the government’s incubator for AI and Rachel Coldicutt’s work at the Society of Hopeful Technologists) and whether a bubble is coming or not, most people’s experience of everyday decision-making, form filling, citizenship and health are all negotiated through a digital interface that is radically changing. And its costing the earth. The Design Council has never really stepped in to digital design work, mostly because its own team doesn’t come from that world. But ignorance isn’t bliss. It could easily pick up the mantle from the ashes of doteveryone, partner with projects by if, work with the existing para-governmental organisations like BBC R&D,  Ada Lovelace Institute , Alan Turing Institute, the Open Data Institute and others.  I wrote a much more detailed post about this in 2024 so I won’t cover that ground again.
• Keep archiving 
  The Design Council’s own archives (dotted around the UK) are a treasure trove of different approaches to help a country mature its understanding of the role of design but they’ve tended to over-index on the first 50 years. The reports and projects of the digital era have yet to be given a proper home for academic researchers and policy-makers to consult. A serious archiving effort with the V&A, the British Library and the National Archives would ensure that this more recent history doesn’t fade away or get lost in a cybersecurity incident. The loss of the Design Council library (I helped pack it up / give it away) and the team’s hybrid work means this key asset will be invisible to the new trustees and leader but it isn’t forgotten by the armies of Design Council Experts and former CABE employees.
• Take up space again
  Young people are (rightly so) tired to their bones of virtual events. If the Design Council is to attract new audience of young people to take up a design career or at least understand what design can be about, it has to take up space again. Think Frontline Club and not the Arts Club. (The RSA’s café is just too depressing, sorry). New spaces like Ibraaz, Kairos and Reference Point feel like a renaissance in members clubs and I think DC should experiment more here.
• Support design hiring
  It’s become painfully obvious that older millenials and Gen X do not know how to either hire nor train designers and Boomers are retiring. Designers are no longer taught ‘professional practice’ at university either.  Unemployment numbers are painfully high and it would be a quick win for DC to develop a service to review a hiring process, contribute to a hiring panel or help a candidate put their best foot forward. Funding avenues for this shouldn’t be a problem.
• Get practical about Designing for Planet
  The only possible next step from the Design Congress is to contribute to the new climate change informed curriculum and work with the Open University on a certified CPD that anyone could take. Any other avenues, in my humble experience, aren’t fast enough. If it’s taken 13 years for the Carbon Literacy Project to certify 150,000 individuals, I think it’s fair to say we’re going to need a bigger boat.

I wish the new incoming CEO the best of luck in making their mark on a unique organisation which I loved contributing to. I and others will be watching with bated breath.