Industry shows recovery from 2004 decline with 18% turnover rise

London turnover is up by 4.5% to £2.3bn, with fee income also seeing a small rise, up from £1.9bn in 2004 to £2bn this year. The regional breakdown remains close to last year's results, however overseas income has gone up 28% to £700m.

Strategically led agencies are being assisted by more of an understanding of the "fuzzy font-end", the early stages of thinking with the designer before any physical design work has been carried out. This, combined with agencies starting to describe their work as "service design" or "proposition design", is giving them the potential to earn a higher fee from design thinking alone.

Multimedia and broadcast designers are strengthening their offers by teaming up with specialists such as interactive designers, animators and games designers. The number of employees in the sector have gone up 1% to 71,000.

In July, the design industry saw the launch of the Creative Industries Sector Skills Council with a £4m budget focusing on skills development.

The BDI, which established in 1993 as British Design Initiative, became British Design Innovation on August 1, to reflect the increasing focus on innovation by designers and the industry.

The not-for-profit organisation said: "We believe it is more beneficial to promote 'design-thinking' than it is to promote design."

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