Back in the summer of last year we had an idea.

How can the Design Community help graduates, as well as all of those in our sector who have little or no prospect of finding jobs because of the turbulence caused by the Covid pandemic?

This wasn’t just because we wanted to reach out and help those who were being confronted with having to abandon an industry that they were as passionate about. It was, if the truth be told, tinged with a slight amount of self-interest. If the design industry cannot attract new blood and fresh creative thinking, how will it continue to thrive without them?

Deborah, Tim, Jonathan and I put our heads together and came up with the Design Community Hub. And the tag line which became a kind of mantra for our initiative was “it’s the least we can do”.

We knew we couldn’t do this on our own, so we put the word out to our mates in the industry and we were joined by Clare and Phil Jones of Podge as networking supremos, alongside Claire from Red Setter for PR help. We needed to get the word out to our community. Enter Reed Words, Wonderful and 2LK on messaging and all things website and with Guild to establish a digital platform to hold it all together.

With a spanking new logo from Jonathan Sand’s design team at Elmwood and a whole load of enthusiasm from us as well, we now have 120 graduates and designers signed up and ready to participate alongside 150 offers of help from the design community. Portfolio surgeries, connections to potential jobs as well as internships, invitations to events at design studios, calls to participate in short term design projects, the list is endless.

So why has it been taking so long to launch this you ask? Simple answer. Money. We needed a project manager, as this is way bigger than we imagined. Big shout out for Clare who has been holding the fort until we find someone. We had a target amount to kick this off and the donations from everybody so far has been amazing, and super generous. We have now made just enough to launch the Design Community Hub and we will be announcing the launch date within the next week.

Stay tuned and if you haven’t donated yet, here’s a link to help you out.

https://uk.gofundme.com/f/the-design-community-hub

Callum Lumsden