A good week had by all… but what’s next?

It’s been a good few days for design. The Design Council’s Design in Business Week kicked off well with James Dyson’s vacuum cleaner making a clean sweep at the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards, proving conclusively that in-house design can have a lot going for it. Then came The Design Show, a new London event giving designers the chance to show clients what they’re capable of. Add to this a host of other gatherings convened by the various design bodies and you have a week of wonders of which the organisers can be proud.

But before we start congratulating ourselves too much, shouldn’t we consider what the clients make of it all? It’s great to see so much effort spent in making the case for design, but the fact it’s packed into one week won’t necessarily yield results if the focus is wrong or the audience unreceptive.

The Design Council should know. It’s run any number of events over the past two years targeted at MPs of all parties and claims a dialogue with Government. Yet where was there a mention of design in the Queen’s Speech the other week, and where therefore does it stand in Government policy? Who knows, a longer term strategy for design in Government may be in the offing, but the issue has yet to get a proper public airing.

We can reasonably expect Design in Business Week to re-affirm the faith in design of the already converted and for new work to come the way of groups exhibiting in The Design Show. But it’s another matter for design to rise up the public or political agenda or for industry to take it on board wholeheartedly on the strength of a week. Even Dyson’s awards success will probably go unnoticed by the mass of company directors who can’t identify with this extraordinarily visionary man. It’ll take more than seven days to turn their heads.

So let’s build on the successes the week brings, but try harder to spread the effort and make 1997 Design in Business Year rather than allocate the industry a small slot in the autumn conference season.