Design Council Slide Collection

The Design Council Slide Collection was transferred to the Faculty of Art and Design from the Design Centre, London, in 1995. The collection comprises almost 22,500 images and covers most areas of design. The majority of slides show products of various kinds (including tableware, furniture, lighting, toys, domestic appliances, textiles and wallpapers), but other areas of design such as architecture, town planning, interior design, graphic design and corporate identity are also included. The emphasis is mainly upon British design in the postwar period up to 1990, but there are also many images illustrating examples of design from other countries and earlier periods.

The Design Council began life as the Council of Industrial Design in 1944, and was established by the British government "to promote by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry." The contents of the collection reflects closely the changing scope and policies of the Council over a period of almost fifty years and provides visual evidence of the criteria it used to evaluate design at different times. It also includes many unique images which record the Council's own activities, such as its annual award scheme and the exhibitions it organised or contributed to in the UK and abroad.

Design Council Slide Collection Cataloguing and Digitisation Project

As a result of the collection's inclusion in the JISC Image Digitisation Initiative (JIDI) and a three-year project funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP), almost half of the collection has been digitized and is available online for educational use through the web site of AHDS Visual Arts.

 Search the AHDS Visual Arts image collections

Slide Loan Scheme

A loan scheme is in operation which enables duplicate slides from the Design Council Collection to be borrowed. A loan fee is charged to external users. Further details are available from the Curator.

Slide Sets

A number of themed slide sets using images from the Design Council Collection and accompanied by text are available for sale as part of the Visual Resources Centre's commercial Slide Sets Scheme.

Further Information

For further information on the loan scheme and access to the collection please contact:

Dr Simon Ford
Curator of the Design Council Slide Collection
Manchester Metropolitan University
Chatham Building
Cavendish Street
Manchester
M15 6BR

Tel: 0161 247 1943
Email: s.c.ford@mmu.ac.uk