It can be a confusing and lonely experience trying to set up a design business on your own. Even more established design companies are often small – with less than five employees fairly typical. This makes it particularly important for designers to have access to external forums for sharing ideas and making contact with other industry colleagues.

In recognition of this situation, Designplus has organised a number of well attended workshops and networking events.

At a recent networking session held as part of the London Design Festival, small design business owners had the opportunity to meet and share ideas with the leaders of a range of other entrepreneurial, start-up and established design businesses. There were also a number of prominent local and industry personalities in attendance.

Deyan Sudjic, renowned critic and curator in the field of architecture and design, spoke to delegates about his vision for design and academia in his role as newly appointed Dean of Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Kingston University.

Maxine Horn, from British Design Innovation, discussed an exciting new project “Turning Propositions into Profits”. BDI hopes that this programme will assist businesses in bringing strategic design intelligence earlier into their business planning frameworks.

The Kingston Innovation Centre has a strong role in supporting start-up creative industries projects in the Kingston area, and is actively working towards the development of a Kingston Centre of Creative Industries (KCCI). Wendy Buckley from the Kingston Innovation Centre presented a number of well-received “top tips” for start-up design businesses at the event.

Hilary Dalke, Designplus Network Leader, presented a picture of the Network aims and objectives and identified key ways in which academia can enable businesses to access innovative methods and skills available to the design community through Universities such as Kingston, Brunel and Westminster.

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