Climbing the Heights—Design Summit

With all the talk this week about politics, policy changes, and the importance of government, you didn't see much mention of design policy. In fact, the only mention of design has been exclamations about the fashion choices of our new First Lady.Unknown to many is that recently, a con-fab of design heavies was held in Washington, D.C. Leaders in design, design education, and Federal government design met to at the US National Design Policy Summit in November and discussed a vision for the future of design.That's right.

It may seem a little surprising---who knew that the government cared about design? And yet, when you think about it, government has a tremendous influence on the design around us. Just think of the look of your local post office.The summit makes clear how important design can be.

Here is a quote:"The U.S. design communities seek to enable through a U.S. national design policy:--design promotion to boost the demand for American goods and services,--innovation policy to protect American intellectual property and support the People’s entrepreneurial spirit,--design standards to guarantee inclusion, sustainability, safety, and quality in the experiences of the human remade world; and--policy as designed to address design’s role in making American democratic values tangible to the People. In a letter supporting the opening of the Fourth Federal Design Assembly in 1978, President Carter wrote:'Good design can help us meet our commitment to improve the efficiency of government…and reaffirm our concern for the human side of government' "



We don't have the space here to go into all the details of the summit, but if you want to read more, check out http://www.designpolicy.org/