[Apologies
for cross posting]
Four
thousand images from the Design Council Slide
Collection have been launched online today, providing a unique
insight into the history of British design and its promotion by the UK
government from the 1940s to the early 1990s.
The Design Council was established in 1944 and is the UK’s national
strategic body for design. The images relate closely to the changing
scope and policies of the Council over a period of almost fifty years,
providing valuable visual evidence of the ways in which design has been
evaluated and promoted throughout this period.
They show a wide variety of products such as tableware, furniture,
lighting, toys, domestic appliances, textiles, wallpapers, office
equipment, engineering components and machinery, as well as other areas
of design such as architecture, town planning, interior design, graphic
design and corporate identity.
The collection also contains many unique images that record the
Council's own activities and initiatives, such as its annual award
scheme and the exhibitions it organised or contributed to in the UK and
abroad, including ‘Britain Can Make It’ and the ‘Festival of Britain’.
An illustrated online guide to the collection has also been launched
today. The guide aims to indicate the strengths of the collection,
enabling users to exploit it more fully as a resource for learning and
research.
‘The collection is an incredibly rich resource for anyone interested in
design’ says David Kester, Chief Executive of the Design Council. ‘In
particular, it demonstrates the Design Council’s long track record of
promoting the use of design to strengthen the UK’s economy and improve
society.’
The slide collection was transferred to the Manchester Metropolitan
University in 1995, and since then a series of digitisation projects
have resulted in over 13,000 images (nearly two-thirds of the
collection) being made available online through the Visual Arts Data
Service (VADS).
The expansion of the Design Council Slide Collection on VADS is one
feature of the new collections and enriched website that has been
funded by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) as part of its
pioneering digitisation programme. JISC Digitisation Programme
Officer, Ben Showers, says:
“JISC’s investment in enriching digital resources is a real commitment
to preserving resources for the use of generations to come. VADS is an
exciting and hugely important collection of unique and valuable images,
and the enhancement of the website will make these resources even more
accessible for teachers, researchers and students across the creative
arts.”
The Design Council Slide Collection
digitisation project was also
supported with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council
(AHRC).
See the Design Council Slide Collection and the online guide at: http://www.vads.ac.uk/collections/DCSC.html
See all of the VADS collections at: http://www.vads.ac.uk
and visit the Design Council’s website at http://www.designcouncil.org.uk