The Report of the Centre of Creative Industries “Designing Polish Design” reinstated the discussion, suspended years ago, about the condition of industrial design in Poland and operations that might improve the situation of this profession. In the debate circles, next to vital interest, there was also visible impatience, resulting from the common sense of lack of understanding for designers’ work.
The awareness that, despite the passing of time, we keep discussing the same thing, the clear and frustrating feeling of déjà vu, encouraged the author to analyse similar documents from the last quarter of a century. The study is not limited to Polish publications, as it recalls important foreign institutions, projects and concepts, which influenced the development of design in Poland.
The article is an invitation to a subjective travel in time, in which the symbolic stops are publications on industrial design in Poland over the past 25 years. The currently forgotten reports and strategies, developed within national and regional programs in the hope of boosting economic innovation, largely remained in their declarative layer, without any particular action plans or obligations. Will the Report of the Centre of Creative Industries bring the expected effects this time? Will popular design tools be used to move from the research stage to action, and actually start “designing Polish design”?
Keywords: design strategies, reports, design methods
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*) This article is published as part of the “Through the Eyes of Practitioners” series, in which texts do not have to undergo the standard peer-review procedure.