Half a century of British design launched online

Four thousand images from the Design Council slide collection are launching online today with Jisc support, providing a unique insight into the history of British design and its promotion by the UK government from the 1940s to the early 1990s.From teacups and tricycles to clocks and cola bottles, the images provide valuable visual evidence of the ways in which design has been evaluated and promoted throughout this period, through the Design Council which is the UK's national strategic body for design.The project is part of Jisc’s digitisation programme which has invested just under £2 million to develop the range and quality of digital resources available to students and researchers in colleges and universities.  The 25 projects in the programme are digitising collections and enhancing existing resources for use in learning, teaching and research.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 makes these resources even more accessible for teachers, researchers and students across the creative arts.” The images  show a wide variety of products including 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).See everything in the VADS collections and find out more about the Design Council