Confirmed! Design Wales Will Present Blair Enns in October

Design Wales have confirmed that Blair Enns founder of the Win Without Pitching movement will be giving a speech in Cardiff on the 17th of October. Having previously seen Blair present we know how inspiring and insightful he is!

Places for the Blair's talk will be on a first come first served basis and restricted to two places per company. The event is open to Welsh design businesses only.

Design Wales represented at the 2008 Design Research Society Conference

Design Wales researcher Gisele Raulik-Murphy attended the “Undisciplined! - the Design Research Society Conference", from 16 to 19 July in Sheffield. This biennial event is the main conference for design academics. This year “Rigour in emerging design disciplines and professions” was chosen as the conference theme. The objective was to discuss the new kinds of “designing” that have been emerging to challenge the traditional design professional profile and reshape the field of design practice.

Gisele presented the paper “A comparative analysis of strategies for design in Finland and Brazil”, emphasising ‘design policy’ as a new discipline for design research. The paper was co-authored with Gavin Cawood from Design Wales; Dr Povl Larsen and Professor Alan Lewis, from PDR.

Product design edition of ‘Design Matters’ launched by Design Wales

In July Design Wales presents a special edition about product development. As well as stories from the mountaineering equipment producer DMM and the boatbuilding company Mustang Marine it also shows that there can be risk in launching new products and how it is crucial to make sure that products are aimed at the right market. Issues related to risk management and sustainable design are also explored in this on-line magazine.

Download the Design Matters: http://www.designwales.org/

Design Wales and intellectual property

Who owns the designs you’ve been commissioned to create? What are the pitfalls of selling goods bearing your brand name outside the UK? At Design Wales we are often asked these questions and as you would expect the answers can be quite complex.

Although this blog will focus primarily on design, we will also include design related intellectual property (IP) items that we find interesting/useful. The inaugural IP entry concerns IP courses, specifically the online IP course offered by the British Library. It focuses on trade marks, copyright, registered designs and patents - what they are, how to claim ownership, how to carry out searches, etc.

We are often asked if any distance learning IP courses exist that could provide a basic overview of IP; hopefully this offering from the British Library will appeal to many people.