Overview
The Design Council champions great design. That means design that improves lives and makes things better.
The Design Council works in a global context and delivers programs throughout the UK and beyond.
"Great design can change lives, communities and organisations for the better. It can create better places to live, and bring communities together. It can encourage healthier living. It can transform business and public services" states the Design Council.
The Design Council mission is to champion this standard of design. As the UK Government’s advisor on design, it sets the benchmark for promoting design nationwide. The councils research and campaigns aim to show just how much intelligent, creative design can achieve.
Working with designers and other disciplines, the council tackles major issues like health, ageing and community cohesion. The council helps foster innovation in business and public services, and improve our built environment. The council gives people the advice, practical tools and knowledge to achieve positive changes in business, government or local communities.
Most importantly, the council gets results. Every day, they're proving that design can make a tangible difference, by developing products and services as useful as they are beautiful.
Organisation
Team
John Mathers - Chief Executive
Ellie Runcie - Director, Future Programmes
Mat Hunter - Chief Design Officer
Madeline Denmead
Marie Clark
Clare Devine
Ailbhe McNabola
Chairman's statement
The Design Council is a global leader. Demonstrated by it's thought leadership, high impact programs and vast reach the Design Council is helping to accelerate transformation in the UK and beyond.
"It gives me great pleasure to announce the Design Council as Design Champion of the 2014 London Design Awards" said Mark Bergin, Chair London Design Awards & [city] design awards.
Key achievements include the Knee High Challenge as a great example of local design lead benefit for Lambeth and Southwark. Plus the Design Council has recently given 3 of the projects an additional £100k each to develop their services / products in that area of London.
Design Council Approach
Since being established by Winston Churchill in 1944, the Design Council experienced design’s ability to transform organisations, products, services and even lives. Today, that experience is shared in many different ways, working with a variety of people to champion and encourage the use of great design.
The Design Council arranges it work into themes, informed by economic and social issues with the greatest potential for design to make a difference. Emerging themes include the ageing population, stimulating economic growth, addressing obesity, and building better communities.
The Design Council press for design-led innovation and new opportunities in all these areas, through policy work with government, research and campaigns, business and public sector design services and Design Challenges programme.
Design Council Status & Funding
The Design Council is an independent charity. In 2011 it integrated with Cabe, the government’s advisor on design in the built environment.
Some programmes receive funding from government departments – particularly from Business, Innovation and Skills, but also from Communities and Local Government and Culture, Media and Sport. The Design Council raises additional income by providing business services and training, and by helping organisations innovate and grow.
The Design Council also work in partnership with sponsors and foundations, both on Design Challenges and on strategic priorities like ageing and communities.
Services - Business Growth
Design can radically transform the way your business thinks and works. For over a decade the Design Council has helped businesses to open up new markets, improve and diversify, and communicate value with conviction. The results speak for themselves.
The Design Council support services are tailored to each business's specific challenges and goals. Dedicated Design Associates work with clients to understand client ambitions and identify opportunities to achieve them.
Design Associates have experience across a range of sectors and have worked with organisations of all sizes and stages of growth. They're top in their field and work with the likes of Virgin, Orange, Philips Design, Tesco, the NHS, Dyson and Black & Decker.
The Design Council has recruited them not only because of their design expertise but because they have business acumen, practical know-how and a genuine passion to support growth through innovation and design.
Services - Service transformation
Transforming public services has to begin with people. The Design Council support services put people at the heart of a clients design process, to make sure a clients services are effective for users as they are efficient for clients.
For every £1 invested in the design of innovative services, the Desing Council public sector clients have achieved more than £26 of social return.
Design has enabled a range of clients to enhance customer and staff satisfaction, transform staff processes and training, improve risk management and make dramatic efficiency savings.
How many other investments could achieve so much? What other single form of support could engage and satisfy customers, transform ways of working, and provide your staff with a legacy of enhanced skills?
Service - Built Environment & Cabe
The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) merged with the Design Council in 2011.
Since 1999, Cabe has provided expert design consultation, Design Review and training. Cabe collaborates extensively with different clients, including developers, planners, design teams, NHS trusts, local authorities and the communities they serve. Cabe established a unique, impartial understanding of the issues our clients face.
The Design Council support skilled, professional team works with our nationwide, cross-sector network of Built Environment Experts to offer support in delivering sustainable places where people want to live and work.
The Design Council support expertise range from housing and office developments to nationally significant infrastructure projects and neighbourhood planning support, landscape design, healthcare, procurement, public space strategy and sustainable urban design.
Design Commissioner - Chairman's Awards
The Design Commissioner Award celebrates the organisation who consistently commissions or champions design work thereby providing instrumental support to the wider design community. The winner is assessed based on a review of their body of work.
More Details