Design Economy is Design Council’s flagship research programme, providing a national picture of the scale, structure and economic contribution of the UK’s design economy.

The design sector is difficult to measure. It is evolving quickly, is often hidden within other industries and has no easy definition. But it is a significant part of the UK economy.

BOP has worked on every iteration of Design Council’s Design Economy series since 2015, providing the most comprehensive evidence base to date on the scale and power of the UK design economy. We have mapped design clusters at both national and local levels, revealing their contribution to employment, exports, and regional growth, and offered a clear picture of how design underpins the wider economy. This latest edition supported by Enterprise Research Centre builds on this established approach, updating the evidence on design’s contribution to the UK economy while maintaining consistency with previous editions.

The research measures the design economy through GVA, employment, business numbers and productivity, alongside analysis of the design workforce and the contribution of designers working within non-design industries. It also looks at how the design economy is distributed across the UK and how it is changing over time.

The resulting research is equipping the Design Council with a powerful evidence base to demonstrate the critical importance of design to both policymakers and industry decision makers.