Design Wales at Wrexham Business Week

If you want to get one step ahead of the fashion market, the next Design Wales event may be of interest to you. The event will take place during Wrexham Business Week and will focus on three key areas: Colour & Trends for Autumn/Winter 09/10, presented by Alison Hughes of Carlin International; Developing a fashion brand and promoting it off and online, presented by Victoria Jones of Design Wales; Intellectual property in fashion design, presented by Nicola Giles of Design Wales.

The event will take place on Thursday 23rd October, 2.00pm – 5.30pm at the Ramada Hotel, Wrexham. The event is free, but entry is by ticket only. If you would like to attend, please contact Design Wales (T: 0845 3031400).

Design Wales presented Blair Enns... but what next?

As widely anticipated Blair Enns came to Cardiff and spoke to the Welsh design community about his 'Win Without Pitching' campaign. DesignWales has been keen to have Blair come and speak as part of our ongoing research into the impact of free pitching and speculative work on design, particularly graphic design businesses.

The core of Blair's stance, is that in order for design businesses to flourish, they need to focus on specific business areas and become known as experts in that area. The examples he gave, were of a mobile telephone fascia company and a catalogue design company. In order to be perceived as expert, design companies must write about their expertise as well as demonstrate it. They must continually build on their knowledge and not become complacent. The idea being, that if you are considered an expert in your chosen field, then you don't have to look for clients... they look for you!

Operations Director of Design Wales, Gavin Cawood in conversation with Blair Enns








The baton has now been passed to the designers present at the talk... so tell us in the comments below, if Blair's talk has given you food for thought.

Design Wales Attends the Launch of the Cardiff Design Festival

Thursday the 2nd of October saw the launch of the Cardiff Design Festival at the Senedd building in Cardiff Bay. Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas AM hosted the event, with speeches from Olwen Mosely the director the festival, and Tom Bewick representing the Cultural Skills Council.

Olwen announced a series of interesting events occuring during the festival. Design Wales is pleased to support the festival by hosting some of these events. A full list of Design Wales events during the Cardiff Design Festival is on our site http://www.designwales.org

The launch event also featured a selection of the finalists' artwork for the Cardiff Design Festival Showcase...it was encouraging to see such a high standard of design work. During Tom Bewick's speech he made reference to a recent study which showed that a higher than average proportion of Welsh companies had design embedded into their businesses. This fact married with a vibrant design community, should make for an optimistic economy!!

The Cardiff Design Festival runs until the end of October.