Blog
Concorde (1976) is the youngest of Royal Mail’s new Design Classics special stamps, and a reminder of how far design has stretched in the last thirty years. More recently London’s design community witnessed an ugly fissure in two incidents that provoked unprecedented media debate about the meaning of design. Remember the angry resignation of James Dyson (inventor of the bagless, dual-cyclone vacuum cleaner) as the Design Museum’s Chair of Trustees? An exhibition about the pioneering mid-century styling maven Constance Spry – a Martha Stewart before her time but all too easily dismissed as a flower-arranger – was the final straw for those who believed a design musuem should narrowly demonstrate the power of engineering wed to manufacturing technology. Then Design Museum jury’s decision to award the title of Designer of the Year to Hilary Cottam; not herself a designer like her fellow candidates, but a social activist passionate about using “design thinking” to address deeply entrenched dysfunction in public services; particularly prisons, schools and health services.