CSD and BEDA urge EC to raise status of design

The European Commission must elevate design as a vital factor in its efforts to promote innovation, according to evidence submitted to the EC by the Chartered Society of Designers and the Bureau of European Designers’ Associations.

The joint response to the EC’s draft Green Paper on innovation lambasts as “inadequate” the paper’s recognition of design’s role as a wealth creator.

Design barely rates a mention. BEDA says it is regrettable how design is not explicitly recognised as an ingredient in innovation.

The CSD drafted the submission on behalf of BEDA, a body which brings together the professional societies representing around 25 000 designers throughout the European Union.

BEDA states that design offers “an important means of tackling the weakness in Europe’s research and industrial base, identified by the EC as ‘comparatively limited capacity to convert scientific breakthroughs and technological achievements into industrial and commercial success’.”

The CSD/BEDA evidence calls for EC initiatives to promote the wider dissemination of good design practice, extend copyright to product and industrial design, and ensure the role of design is understood at regional, national and EC levels.

Amsterdam consultancy Visser Bay Anders Toscani has designed a new identity for the 27-year-old BEDA (pictured). Designer Lilian Vos has created a die-cut identity portraying BEDA as the means through which graphics, architecture, industrial and interior design can be viewed.