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Terence, The figures quoted were given on ID Forum so I cannot verify them. But based on my own experience I a managed a project in the UK developing infrastructure for Middle Eastern cities in the 1980's which accounted for 1% of the exports of the UK that month and relied on a winning tender based on cost and design. There were engineers and other professionals involved but the project needed design in the first phase to go forward. It is not clear whether the figures are based on what the designers are paid or indirect value of design linked to manufactured exports. If it is the latter I could believe the figures quoted. ______________________________ R o b C u r e d a l e Professor, Chair Product Design College for Creative Studies Detroit 201 East Kirby Detroit MI 48202-4034 Phone: 313 664 7625 Fax: 313 664 7620 email: [log in to unmask] http://www.ccscad.edu ______________________________ >>> Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> 12/08/03 09:02PM >>> Dear Rob, I think you are overattributing economic value to Product Design/ID - unless you are including engineering design and other technical design activity as part of ID. I suspect the figures quoted from IDForum for Design include engineering and other forms of technical design in the 2.8% of GNP. Would expect the proportion attributable to the 'Art and Craft' -based elements of Product Design and ID to be a very small percentage of that 2.8%. This is by comparing the IDForum figures with Design Council figures for British industry 2001/2002 and Engineering Employers Federation statistics for UK, US and Germany (these figures unfortunatedly roll all forms of design into R&D), and by looking at 'deep-cut' analyses of the contribution of different design disicplines to a variety of products where for many products the 'product design' process seems to be around 1% of the total design resource. I welcome pointers to any reliable economic figures about different areas of design in the UK and any other country. On a slightly different tack, I think its important to differentiate between the very different disciplines of Engineering Design and Engineering (perhaps better called Engineering Analysis). Currently, the educational focus of Engineering programs is mainly to provide engineers with the skills of mathematical modelling. Good Engineering Design courses, however, have a focus on product creation while still expecting high level abstract modelling skills. Many of these engineering design courses include programs drawing on social sciences and other disciplines. In some ways this is similar to the differences between Architecture and Structural Engineering (except that many structural engineers are also designers...). Best regards, Terry ======= Dr. Terence Love Dept of Design Faculty of BEAD Curtin University +61 (0)8 9266 4018 [log in to unmask] ======= <snip Rob Curedale> Some interesting recent UK figures from [log in to unmask] on IDForum website: "Creative industries accounted for 7.9% of GDP in 2000. Four of the creative industries account for three quarters of the economic value of the grouping of sectors: Design (2.8% of the whole economy), Software (1.6%), Publishing (0.9%) and advertising (0.7%). <snip> <snip> We do not of course know how much of 'this' creative industry involves Industrial Design." Or how these figures compare to engineering and sciences. <end snip>