What the CSD needs is all of our support

Josef Ransley and Richard Woolf have rung the alarm bells (DW Letters, 27 June) – were they heard?

For some time Design Week’s pages have been full of calls to bring the representative bodies together – but together to work in collaboration for the greater good of the design profession, not to get rid of the Chartered Society of Designers and leave the profession, potentially, with a cartel.

Without doubt, the CSD’s financial problems have affected its ability to serve all the interests of its chartered members, but now Bob Searles and his advisers have managed to cut a deal with the bank, it gives the CSD a fighting chance. Surely at this time it deserves support to ensure it survives and becomes an effective and credible body which, as Josef Ransley points out, is critical if designers wish to be taken seriously.

However, this will only happen if the design professionals care enough to come out and show their support. If they do not – the profession may well find itself left with one organisation dictating its future, which has no charter and is not structured to represent individuals.

Will designers at that stage wake up and wonder what has happened to their professional credibility? It will be too late by then – so now is the time to act, support the CSD in any way you can and make sure it survives this night of the long knives.

Maxine J Horn

The British Design Initiative

London SW6