The Executive Boards of the two international umbrella organisations of design Icsid (umbrella organisation of industrial designers) and Icograda (umbrella organisation of graphic designers) have just announced the appointment of Prof. Dr. Peter Zec as new Lead Chair of the joint international design alliance IDA. Thus Zec, President of Icsid, head of the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, and initiator of the renowned red dot design award, will hold the highest office in the design community in future.
The IDA is a strategic association which has been created by the two international umbrella organisations Icsid and Icograda in 2005 in order to realise joint initiatives and to strengthen the role of the design associations as influential NGOs (non-government organisations), which are consulted as advisers by international organisations such as the UNO and UNESCO in all design-related areas.
Zec: "I regard this kind of lobbying work which goes beyond our own projects as very important, because design is not just a nice extra, which can beautify our lives and make companies more successful. Design can also play a significant role in development work. Take Botswana, for example, which has been exploited for decades because of its diamond resources, the so-called blood diamonds. A few (foreign) diamond dealers are getting rich through the diamonds while the people are suffering. However, if design schools were set up in Botswana which are specialising in jewellery design, the locals would get the chance to process their diamonds themselves and thus be able to sell them abroad for large amounts of money. A blossoming industry could be created here."
For the one year period of his chairmanship, Zec is therefore very concerned about increased lobbying work and large involvement in the field of design training. Additionally, he is looking forward to continuing his project 'World Design Capital', a competition which is held every two years and which can be entered by cities that have successfully used design to restructure und redesign the city.
About Peter Zec
Prof. Dr. Peter Zec is President of the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen and founder of the red dot design award, one of the world's leading design competitions in the fields of product and communication design. In 1993, he was appointed Professor of Business Communication at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. In 2005, Prof. Dr. Peter Zec was elected President of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid) in Montreal, Canada. An expert on the German and international design scenes, Peter Zec is the publisher and author of many design books, among them the "red dot design yearbook".
About IDA
Since its foundation in 2005, the IDA has been managed by a Board Committee, which is in turn managed by the Presidents of Icsid and Icograda. The Committee President is appointed anew every year. This year Prof. Zec will take office with immediate effect. He is thus successor to Jacques Lange, Icograda President and Senior Partner at Bluprit Design in South Africa.
The upcoming projects of the IDA include:
- World Design Capital: This project is about a biennial competition which cities from all around the world can enter that have successfully used design to restructure and redesign the city.
- World Design Report: The World Design Report is a pilot project which divides the design world into 12 sectors in order to find out what socioeconomic contributions and what contributions to cultural development design can make in economic processes.
- World Design Summit: An international design forum which examines the applications of a multidisciplinary design economy and aims to promote creative solutions which improve economic development and the general quality of life in the whole world.
About Icsid
The international umbrella organisation of industrial designers, Icsid, was founded by a group of international industrial design associations in 1957. Today, the association has more than 160 members in more than 50 nations representing some 150,000 designers worldwide. The members include professional associations, universities, design promotion institutions, companies, and authorities that have committed themselves to promoting the concerns of industrial design and designers.
Icsid supports and promotes design as a subject and valuable basis of discussion at international forums. This requires close co-operation with designers, governments, NGOs, companies and organisations to guarantee and strengthen an omnipresence of design. For this purpose Icsid has closely worked together with the UNESCO, UNIDO, ISO, and WIPO.