DY launches last push for design

Organisers of Design Yorkshire have launched a last ditch attempt to raise local design consciousness.

Local businesses pledged cash at a meeting in Leeds on Monday (25 March) to sponsor a 48-sheet poster campaign and to enable a travelling information ‘pod’ to be built.

‘I am certain that the marketing campaign will happen and confident that the pod will appear on the Yorkshire landscape before the end of the year,’ says Elmwood chairman and co-chairman of DY Jonathan Sands.

The ideas were among six suggestions in From Doom to Boom, a book designed to stimulate debate on design’s potential to boost Yorkshire, that were presented.

The book, designed by Thompson Design, is based on research by Sheffield Hallam University. It compares Yorkshire’s current bleak scene with how it might thrive by 2010 through better use of design. Sands says the book was ‘a last big push to jolt local businesses into action’.

Other ideas are a Yorkshire embassy in London; a range of Duke’s Choice foods and Bradford winning the bid to be European Capital of Culture 2008.

The outcome of Monday’s meeting will be presented on 27 May at a dinner hosted by Lord Puttnam.