The Design Council is campaigning hard in the manufacturing and technology sectors in a bid to get its message across. Richard Eisermann, design and innovation director, explains why good design makes business sense. What is design and why should it matter to engineers? Two big questions for Richard Eisermann, director for design and innovation at the Design Council, to wrestle with.

As you would expect, Eirsermann and his colleagues spend a lot of time thinking about the first questions, and over the past few years have become increasingly focused on the second.

The Council is running campaigns in both manufacturing and technology sectors in a bid to persuade UK companies that good design makes business sense, and is far more that the 'window dressing' label it still attracts from some quarters.

Eisermann admitted that design attracts any amount of definitions, but described it as: 'The creative process by which economic, social and aesthetic value is first imagined, then shaped and finally embodied in a meaningful, desired outcome.'

Out another way, design is fundamental to the process of developing, making and selling a product.

'When I talk to business people and engineers about design, I try not o use the word design,' said Eisermann. 'What we talk about is value, about design as a process, rather than a thing.

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