Practical insight to design careers from the DESIGN WALES FORUM

The audience.

Professional "mingling" after the interviews.

The panel.

We’ve been receiving great feedback about the Design Wales Forum event we held earlier this week (20th July) at the Wales Millennium Centre.

"Help I’m a graduating designer…what do I do next"? brought together a panel of established creative professionals from the design sector in Wales to talk about their career paths since graduation to provide insight to those just finishing their degree. The panel revealed their personal stories whilst being interviewed, chat-show style, by Design Wales Forum Coordinator Victoria Jones. If there were common threads about how their creative careers had developed, it was probably in maintaining a singular focus and desire to work in the creative sector. This along with making sure they were ready to take advantage of every opportunity they came across – which frequently came from unexpected places and had results they could never have foreseen.

After a rapid 90 minutes of interviews the audience, panel and Design Wales team were encouraged to “mingle”, swapping contact details and exchanging ideas – because you never know where your next opportunity or even a possible business partner might come from!


We have to thank the panel for their time and being prepared to tell their personal professional stories. They were:

Felicity Sawkins (fashion)
http://www.tinkersinfinity.com/,

Carla Reynolds (ceramics and creative business advice),

Dominic Eggbeer (product design and research)
http://www.pdronline.co.uk/whatwedo_research.php,

Tim Harling (graphic design)
http://www.keepdesigntidy.com/,

Kate Vaughan (copywriter)
http://www.the-proofreader.co.uk/
http://www.blindspotdesign.co.uk,

Ollie Wells, (interactive media)
http://www.sequence.co.uk/,

Emma Luczyn (interactive media)
http://www.sequence.co.uk/.

This event was a partnership between the Design Wales Forum and the Wales Millennium Centre, who expertly provided the venue, sound engineer and house staff.

SEE nominated for RegioStars award!

The SEE project, led by Design Wales, has been nominated for RegioStars – the awards for regional innovative projects.

SEE is a network of 11 European partners sharing knowledge and experience on how design can be integrated into regional and national policies to boost innovation, sustainability, social and economic development. The aim of SEE is to pool knowledge, share experiences, stimulate debate, develop new thinking and build rapport and credibility in order to influence policy at regional and national levels to integrate design. The project’s ultimate goal is to integrate design into innovation policies. This work is focused on creating better conditions for SMEs to operate, developing innovation and making use of design resources.

‘The objective of the RegioStars Awards is to identify good practices in regional development and to highlight original and innovative projects which could be attractive and inspiring to other regions.’ We were invited to submit an application under the category ‘networking initiatives supporting regional growth and SMEs’, stating how far our project objectives have been met, the strategic context of the project, highlighting the innovative character of the project and the impact.

Our objective to ‘compare strategies and delivery of design support programmes, in particular those related to the development of innovative products and services’ directly links to the project’s impact on SMEs. During SEE’s lifespan there has been a continuous debate about good practices to deliver design support for SMEs, an activity all partners undertake in their regions. The next project workshop (November 2010) will focus on support programmes for SMEs, in addressing a route to market for their innovative ideas. Concrete results are expected from the exchange of experiences/policy recommendations drawn from the workshop. Results so far have been incremental, as result of the exchange of experiences.

We will keep you informed of our progress in the application process….

SEE Policy Booklet 2 now available in French

The second SEE Policy Booklet is now available to download in French from the SEE website.

As part of SEE’s efforts to engage with government representatives and policy-makers to integrate design into policy across Europe, we are publishing four SEE Policy Booklets between 2008 and 2011. The first, Integrating Design into Regional Innovation Policy, was published in November 2009. The second, Realising Sustainability and Innovation through Design: Making it Happen in Communities, Industry, Public Sector and Policy-Making, has just been released. Both booklets outline the rationale behind policy intervention, explore how design can be employed to realise innovation and sustainability, provide illustrative case studies and put forward policy proposals.

To download a copy visit: www.seeproject.org/publications

Design Wales Forum and the Wales Millennium Centre Present....

Help I’m a Graduating Designer… What Do I Do Next?
After all the stress and activity of finishing your degree… you begin to realise that you have to think about what you are going to do next. Should you get a job? Start a business? Study further? There are a myriad of possible paths to take and decisions to make… it can all be a bit bewildering. You are not the only new designer to have gone through this…
We have invited a panel of designers from different disciplines and other creatives to share their experiences of what happened to them after they graduated, and what they did next. This chat show style event will also include an opportunity for you to ask questions of them yourself.
This FREE event would be useful for recent design and other creative graduates. For further details and to book a place email vjones@designwalesforum.org / 02920 417 018
Date: 20th of July 2010
Time: 6:30pm – 8:30pm
Venue: Wales Millennium Centre

International response to launch of the second SEE policy booklet

We have had a great response to the launch of the latest SEEProject Policy booklet from leading design organisations around the World. The European Commission, ICSID, BEDA and the New York University Design Department have all highlighted the latest booklet in their on-line news feeds.

The SEEProject is intended to help our understanding of the role design can play in realising regional and national innovation  regional policy. The most recent booklet aimed at policy makers is entitled Realising Sustainability and Innovation through Design and can be found on the SEEProject website along with other resources.

Design Wales are the lead partner for the SEEProject, which is funded by the European Commission through the INTERREG programme.

Design Wales recruiting a Service Designer

Design Wales are looking for an experienced Service Designer to play a role in the development and delivery of a three-year Service Design programme for industry.
The project has the joint focus of developing capability in Wales whilst raising awareness and uptake of Service Design in wider industry (so increasing regional capacity whilst raising demand).
Design Wales have a strong track record in design support, primarily because of our ability to recruit designers who are interested in using their experience to help industry firstly understand design and then manage its use within the unique context of that particular business - these skills build on what's required of a good designer but have a different emphasis.



The advert above will be in DesignWeek for the next two weeks. The deadline is 5pm on 6th July and an application form can be obtained from www.uwic.ac.uk/jobs

Study visit to Denmark

Last week (1st & 2nd June) we joined a study visit to Denmark and Sweden to investigate social innovation projects in Copenhagen and Malmo. We were invited along by the organisers La 27e Region who had brought along a large group of French civil servants interested in learning how a wide variety of social issues and public sector services can be addressed through design thinking, collaboration between stakeholders and creative new approaches.


Of particular interest was a workshop undertaken at MindLab in Copenhagen. Funded by three Danish ministerial departments (the Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs, the Ministry of Taxation and the Ministry of Employment), MindLab acts as an innovation unit that engages the public sector, citizens and businesses in creating new solutions for society by providing a physical space and inspiring creativity, innovation and collaboration.

The discussion during the workshop centred on how social innovation might develop in the coming years and the barriers that exist in developing the wider use of more innovative approaches to resolving societal issues - such as the use of language and who has potential ownership of social innovation. The workshop at MindLab included a presentation by You, I and We, who come from an urban design background and have a vision to develop Copenhagen as an international centre for social innovation, leading the rest of Europe.

Whilst in Denmark we took the opportunity to also meet with the Danish Design Centre in Copenhagen (one of our SEEProject partners) and the Healthcare Innovation Centre in Herlev just north of the city to discuss our new service design project (more information to come soon).

La 27eRegion positions itself as a "laboratory of new public policies in the digital age. We want to provide a framework for all those and all those who wish to innovate, experiment with new approaches, and imagine the future of the territories".