The Design Council is a United Kingdom non-departmental public body incorporated by Royal Charter and registered as a charity.[1]
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The Design Council started in 1944 as the Council of Industrial Design. It was founded by Hugh Dalton, President of the Board of Trade in the wartime Government, and its objective was 'to promote by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry'.
The Council of Industrial Design's first director, S C Leslie, played a leading role in the Britain Can Make It exhibition of 1946, but it was Sir Gordon Russell, Leslie's replacement in 1947, who would set the model for the organisation for the next 40 years. He once described the job as 'pushing a tank uphill'.
Russell, who played a key role in the 1951 Festival of Britain, examined ways to reform design education to train the new industrial designers post-war Britain needed. He also took the case for good design over the heads of manufacturers to retailers and consumers. In 1956, the Design Centre (later to include a shop and cafe) was opened to the public in London's Haymarket.
Russell's Council of Industrial Design combined exhibitions with product endorsements, direct services to industry, commercial publishing and retail. It was a model widely imitated around the world, and one later directors would try to modify.
From 1959 Sir Paul Reilly brought an increasing emphasis on technology and engineering design to the organisation's work, triggering a name change in the early 1970s to Design Council. From 1977 Keith Grant maintained the organisation's high public profile and campaigned to increase visual literacy and design awareness in schools.
By the 1980s Britain was increasingly design conscious, with high street spending boosting design investment, consumers and retailers aware of the merits of good design, and industrial designers part of a growing design industry.
From 1988 Ivor Owen switched from public campaigning to focusing on business and education. Design Council retailing and product endorsement were closed and industrial services were regionalised.