Netherlands

Today, collectives such as Droog Design and Moooi continue to make waves thanks to their innovative furniture designs. A steady flow of emerging talents – among them Maarten Baas, a 2002 graduate of Eindhoven’s Design Academy - has kept the Netherlands on the global design map.

Dutch design has long been characterised by a sense of playfulness, functionality, and an appreciation of design in public life. As early as the 1930s, the Netherlands’ state-owned telephone and postal service, PTT, commissioned typography for phone books from Piet Zwart - designs that remain iconic to this day.

Design promotion

The idea that art belongs only in a museum has never been part of Dutch culture. Design fits well in that ethos, and has been recognised by the government as adding value to industry and public life.

A major design body in the Netherlands is Premsela, funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, and by the City of Amsterdam. Premsela is charged with improving and fostering the design climate. It organises public events, exhibitions, debates, and works to support and advise people in the design industry.

One of its major resources is www.design.nl, which provides news, information and directories relevant to design. It also publishes Morf, a twice-yearly magazine aimed solely at design students.

The membership body for people in the design industry is the Beroepsorganisatie Nederlandse Ontwerpers (BNO). BNO has around 2,500 individual designers and 200 designer agencies among its members. In its present form, BNO is only 10 years old, but its precursor organisation, the Association for Craftsmanship and Artisanship, dates back to 1904. BNO exists to support members in their work, and to promote Dutch design within the Netherlands and internationally.

Facts and figures

In 2005, Premsela and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science asked the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) to analyse the value of the design industry.

The report, Design in the Creative Economy, calculated the added value of design in the Netherlands to be €2.6bn. It found that the Dutch design industry is estimated to employ around 46,000 designers, with roughly three quarters in the commercial services sector, 20% in industry and the remainder in the non-profit sector.

Table:  Numbers of designers in different disciplines

Product design

Florists 6,300
Metalworkers 2,200
Fashion designers 1,300
Industrial designers 4,100

Subtotal: 13,900

Communications

Advertising designers 1,400
Window dressers 1,700
Illustrators and graphic designers  24,300

Subtotal:  27,400

Spatial design

Landscape designers 1,500
Interior designers 3,300

Subtotal: 4,800

Total:  46,100

(Source for all figures: Design in the Creative Economy, TNO, 2005)

Education

Design Academy Eindhoven is the best known academic design institution in the Netherlands. In its 2007 Style & Design supplement, Time magazine called the academy the ’school of cool’. And Icon magazine has ranked the academy fifth in its top 21 most influential people, products and institutes worldwide.
For more information, visit www.designacademy.nl

Elsewhere, Arnhem and Amsterdam are centres for fashion design, with the Amsterdam Fashion Institute and the Arnhem Academy of Art and Design. Amsterdam is also home to the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, a centre for design and fine arts.

The universities at Delft, Twente and Eindhoven (separate from the Design Academy) all specialise in industrial design.