Design Related Links

This is a page of categorised links to websites about design. Under each link is a brief description of the site's content. The order of appearance of the entries is arbitrary - happy browsing!

Dott 07 Designs of the time is a design awareness and education programme, running in the North East of England. The programme has six core themes that will involve communities in the process of designing services. The emphases are on demonstrating the relevance of design to everyday life and the importance of using design methodologies for services as well as products.

The Design Council An organisation which encourages the best use of design. The Design Council is funded by the UK government's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) - which sees the possibilities for businesses to use design to improve their competitive edge. This site contains more useful information than most.

Design Wales A site promoting design to Welsh businesses. There seem to be plenty of useful resources such as articles on Intellectual Property.

OpenFolio.com This website, hosted by the University of Northumbria at Newcastle, aims to help designers and artists world wide to collaborate by allowing them to put together online portfolios which others can search through for relevant skills, experience or interests. Currently over 2,000 members use the site, including professionals, academics and students from Europe, the Far East, North America and the Middle East.

Design Management Institute A US based, non-profit organisation which seeks to demonstrate "the strategic role of design in business" and to improve "the management and utilization of design".

British Design and Art Direction Professional association and charity which represents design and advertising in the UK.

Design Business Association Trade association for the UK design industry.

British Design Innovation A membership body, formerly known as the British Design Initiative, which focuses on British design and designers. Also contains several Case Studies.

Chartered Society of Designers This professional association's website is primarily aimed at the Society's members, but has various other items of interest.

The Design Museum Based in London, England. The Design Museum website doesn't give much detail, but it outlines the exhibitions and, if you're planning a visit, the Flash version will let you print a discount voucher towards the entry fee.

In 2001, UK Government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) produced a report, part of which looks at the importance of design to the UK economy. The full report - the Creative Industries Mapping Document 2001 - can be found on the DCMS website in the document archive for Creative Industries. This link leads to the relevant chapter on Design. (pdf document)

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The case study here are from sites promoting design. Sites in the Design Firms section give examples of client work from a design firm's portfolio.

Exploring Design and Innovation Sadly, this website, originally hosted by Brunel University, seems to have disappeared. It looked at many of the issues that face today's designers, using "Millennium Product" case studies from the Design Council site to illustrate particular points.

Living Innovation A joint effort from the Design Council and the DTI, this site looks at innovation and product development.

The Audi Design Foundation The Foundation runs their Young Designer of the Year awards and grant scheme to help promising designers to develop their ideas into working prototypes. The website includes case studies.

British Design Innovation This membership body website contains some interesting case studies.

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The UK Patent Office The agency responsible for Intellectual Property (Copyright, Designs, Patents and Trade Marks) in the UK.

esp@cenet A site which enables you to search databases of patents from around the world.

Intellectual Property Rights Helpdesk Billed as a "Free service supporting creativity and innovation in Europe", this site does pretty much what it says on the tin.

The Design and Artists Copyright Society The copyright and collecting society for visual artists in the UK.

PatentCafe.com, USA This site offers help on Patents, Intellectual Property, inventions and innovation. Aimed at US based inventors.

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Archiseek A directory of architecture on the Internet.

Architecture.com Architecture.com is the website of The Royal Institute of British Architects. RIBA boast that their website is host to 250,000 pages of useful information about architecture and architects.

RSA The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Their website contains information about the RSA Student Design awards and lists RSA publications about design.

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About Graphic Design One of the websites in the About.com series, this site focuses on graphic design and points to a number of other resources on this topic.

Adobe Adobe is a leading publisher of software for digital image creation and manipulation. The Adobe website contains information and tutorials for their products.

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Materials

Materials Information Services This is a range of services providing independent advice about the selection of engineering materials.

British Plastics & Rubber On-Line The website of this trade publication has lots of information, resources and links to the world of plastics.

Institute of Materials UK professional body for materials scientists and engineers. The Institute is in the process of amalgamation to form The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining.

MatWeb US based online materials information resource.

ASM - The Materials Information Society US based membership organisation providing information about industrial materials.

Standards

British Standards Institution UK technical standards body.

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Dulux This paint manufacturer's website has a number of ideas for using colour, plus tools to help you design your own colour schemes and to find the best paint types to apply them.

British Interior Design Association BIDA is a membership body for interior designers. Their website enables searching for designers and trade suppliers

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Web Page Design For Designers This site is all about designing for the World Wide Web - but the emphasis is on graphic design and content instead of the technology. The Typography section is one of the treats.

About Web Design A website in the About.com series, this site focuses on the design aspects of websites (e.g. "Does Flash indulge the user or the designer?") and points to a host of other resources on this topic.

The 5k.org This site is based on a competition to see who could produce the most creative website with a maximum size of Five Kilobytes. The inventiveness of some of the designs is truly inspirational - and they're all quick to download.

Visibone Webmaster's Color Laboratory An innovative colour charting approach makes this site a must-visit for anyone trying to develop a colour scheme for a website. The site lets you experiment with different colour combinations and gives you reference details such as RGB and CMYK values. Make the most of those 216 web-safe colours and learn about how colours work together at the same time.

Color Wheel Pro This is the home site of Color Wheel Pro - a software tool to help web designers to create colour schemes, with the option to preview them on examples. The site also has a lot of background detail, such as information on Colour Theory, different types of colour wheel, color schemes, and the psychological meanings of colours.

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[a-n] - The Artists Information Company UK based not-for-profit organisation providing information and advice for artists.

Adaptive Environments US organisation promoting the principle of design for inclusion rather than exclusion - design for all, or "Universal Design".

Doors of Perception A broad-ranging website and blog on all aspects of design and innovation by internationally renowned designer John Thackara.

Easy RGB A website about working with colour. The site has various tools which make it easier to work with colours on a computer monitor and match them to colours in the real world. Not just for computer buffs, this site could be useful for anyone who works up designs on a computer before putting them into practise - interior designers, architects, painters, graphic designers, even people doing home improvement projects.

About Decorative Arts Another website in the About.com series, this site looks at the broad topic of Decorative Arts, pointing to a numerous websites which demonstrate the artistic aspect of design.

Metropolis Magazine Online The website of Metropolis Magazine - devoted to architecture, culture and design. The online version carries some of the feature articles from the print edition.

Communication Arts Based on the magazine of the same name, this website may be of particular interest to designers working in print, new media and corporate identity.

Google Web Directory - Design The Design section of the classified web directory on the Google search engine website.

The Environmental Literacy council This US based site covers a number of environmental issues - and there's a specific section on Green Design.

o2.org An "international network" of designers interested in sustainable design.

Design Addict This site claims to have over 1,000 pages of information on Modern and Post-Modern designers and manufacturers. Thankfully, it is indexed.

The Librarians' Index to the Internet This is a collection of categorised links to resources on the Internet which have been reviewed by information professionals. The Index is regularly maintained. You can search for a specific topic, trust to luck and browse the results of a search for "design", or follow links to subject groups. The Arts topics list is a good starting point.

IBM's Design Pages A section of IBM's website devoted to Ease of Use and "User-Centered Design".

The drawings of Leonardo da Vinci A small site demonstrating the genius of this famous artist and inventor.

DesignInMotion "The Art, Technology and Business of Motion Design"

The Ergonomics Society The website of this membership body for ergonomists (known in the US as human factors specialists). The site has some basic explanations about the application of ergonomics.

The Plain English Campaign A campaign to promote the use of plain English, instead of jargon and "big words", in documents aimed at the public.

Foto Search Stock PhotographyThis site allows you to search for and purchase stock photography from more than fifty quality stock photography vendors in one place. Many of the images are royalty-free.

Image100 An image stock library with a difference. As well as having an eclectic selection of images, the pricing structure means that the images can normally be used royalty-free.

FreeFoto.com A more traditional looking image stock library - available entirely on-line. Whilst commercial users pay for the images they want, FreeFoto.com offers its large collection of photographs free for private, non-commercial use.

NEspace A pilot service for professional artists in North East England, aiming to help them to find studios or other workspace they need. The service is free and offers advice to both artists and property owners or property developers on making premises available for artists. The service also acts as an advocate for artists workspace as an economic development benefit.

Intute arts and humanities section A guide to authoritative on-line information. This part of Intute has replaced Artifact, the arts and creative industries hub developed by the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), which had itself superseded ADAM (see below).

ADAM ADAM is the Art, Design, Architecture and Media information gateway - aimed at people in education, it is a selected catalogue of design-related Internet resources. Although development appears to have been suspended, the catalogue is still both searchable and browsable.

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Dolmen This Dublin-based design business demonstrates a product portfolio covering several distinct sectors. Look for the shoe shine product example - where the packaging is integral to the way the product is used.

Boym Partners The website of Constantin and Laurene Leon Boym's design partnership is an interesting design in its own right, but is also full of interesting examples of design.

BHR Group The case studies on this site sketch out the factors considered when designing industrial products.

APSDS Airport Pavement Structural Design System Case studies in the way a structural design system has been used to analyse the surfacing needs of heavy traffic areas such as airports and container ports.

Ivarson Design Group The site includes case studies of the firm's work on strategic brand design.

Xenophya Xenophya Design is a multi-disciplinary design and development organisation specialising in transportation and product design.

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Please note that these links are to websites created by other people. We make no claim to own copyright of the sites' content. Nor do we make any guarantee as to the quality of the information you find there, nor accept responsibility for your use of that information. The content was as described when each site was visited, please inform us of any material changes as soon as possible.

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