The Design Economy is one of the UK’s fastest growing sectors, worth £85.2bn, and provides employment to 1.69 million people and opportunities for more than 65K freelancers.
Employment, freelancing and/or setting up as a studio are the typical career-options open to a designer today. However, as the world of work evolves & automates, a new option is becoming available to designers – to become founders of start-ups.
Many people think design is about how things look, but the truth is design is also about how things work. Design is more than a service industry, it is a cross-functional way of thinking that is invaluable in starting innovative companies. Empathy for customers, an eye for aesthetics and creativity make designers excellent potential founders. However, a general lack of business skills, focus and confidence prevents them from pursuing this path.
That’s why designer Kishen Parmar and social entrepreneur Sonal Kadchha came up with an idea to change this scenario – and possibly change the future. Design Future is an accelerator that empowers designers with a new career option – to start their own companies.
“Designers often take the more traditional route of an in-house design role, freelancing or starting a studio, because they don’t have the confidence and necessary skills to start up by themselves, and we want to empower these professionals, giving them the tools and platform to enable them to become creative change-maker founders, and Design the Future with us” says Kishen Parmar, founder and CEO.
With that in mind, Design Future is looking to harness the latent potential in the British designer community by launching an accelerator to help them turn their ideas & prototypes into companies.
We are looking for designers who operate within Brand & Graphic, Digital & Web and Product & industrial Design – who have a track record for producing good design work and have outstanding idea(s) for change – in areas such as health & wellbeing, energy, food, hospitality, financial, work, cities, web three/distributed web. Aspiring and existing designer founders can also apply to secure up to £150k of investment.
Designers have everything they need to become change-maker founders and creators – they just need to know that it is a possibility and be given a helping hand, and Design Future will play an integral role in bringing more designers to the front row of the creative and business world.
