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Design Council, 34 Bow Street, London WC2E 7DL

The Design Council is a British organisation incorporated by Royal Charter and registered as an independent charity

The Design Council has been championing design for more than 60 years. During that time the UK has seen massive social, economic and technological change.

In the beginning The Design Council started life 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'. And that was to stay unaltered through half a century of social, technological and economic change.

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'. Defining the blueprint 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.

New name, new focus Sir Paul Reilly (from 1959) brought an increasing emphasis on technology and later engineering design to the organisation's work, triggering a name change in the early 1970s to Design Council. Keith Grant (from 1977) maintained the organisation's high public profile and campaigned to increase visual literacy and design awareness in schools.

But by the 1980s Britain was increasingly design conscious, with high street spending boosting design investment, consumers and retailers seemingly convinced about the merits of good design and industrial designers now part of a growing and increasingly visible design industry.

Ivor Owen (from 1988) switched from public campaigning to focusing on business and education.

Design Council retailing and product endorsement were closed and industrial services were regionalised.

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