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The Chartered Society of Designers has received Royal permission to grant the designation of Chartered Designer, thus allowing it to go ahead with its controversial plans for professional certification in design. Will you be applying?

In February we reported on the CSD’s application to the UK Government to approve a system of professional certification for designers. That application has now been approved. According to a CSD statement today, “The Society is now able to award Chartered Designer status to those practicing in design and satisfying a level of competence determined by CSD. The new powers place the Society in the enviable position of not only setting standards for professional practice in design but also monitoring and regulating that practice.”

The announcement of the CSD’s plans caused considerable debate at the time, with many designers raising doubts concerning the way in which certification would we awarded, the criteria, the make-up of any panel assessing applications and even the point of such a system. Today the CSD says “as with all power there comes responsibility and the Society must now set to work determining the manner in which this power may be exercised for the benefit of the design profession, all who aspire to enter it and those who benefit from the provision of design.”

It is, apparently “anxious to consider the views of as wide a spectrum as possible before determining how it will set up, maintain and operate the register [of qualified designers]. The Society has a responsibility to ensure that any such register is sustainable and for the benefit of the profession as a whole whilst working also for the benefit of education, commerce and the public.” The CSD has now pledged to carry otu a lengthy period of consultation “with those inside and outside of the design sector before deciding and announcing how it proposes to set up and maintain the register of Chartered Designers. It is hoped that this consultation will be completed by the summer of 2012 following which a mechanism will be determined thus enabling pathways to Chartered Designer to be established later that year.”

More here

Read our original CDes story for some great debate on the issues surrounding professional certification, including a lengthy contribution from the CSD’s Frank Peters, here

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