Crowdfunding- the future of design or the designer's IP nightmare?

First Session Thursday 14th July

This Thursday night Interactive Design Agency Conran Singh, part of Sir Terence Conran’s design group, will host the first in their new series of events - The CONRAN future sessions - which will discuss current and emerging issues in the design world.

The first event, produced in collaboration with crowdfunding platform getitmade.com, will focus on the subject of Crowdfunding - the future of design or the designer's IP nightmare?

Designing, manufacturing and marketing a product is a difficult enough challenge for most creative producers at the best of times – let alone when most investors are tightening their belts and battening down the hatches. Fortunate, then, that we have that global panacea – the Internet – to help us get into new markets the easy way. Networked technologies are starting to help creative folks connect with one another and with potential backers to help them take their ideas beyond the drawing board onto the shelf.

'Crowdsourced' and 'crowdfunded' products provide new local ways for expertise to scale to a global marketplace, but surely there are still huge pitfalls to avoid?

How can the small, enthusiastic creator put their ideas out there into the public domain whilst still avoiding having their intellectual property being stolen by larger, global corporations? How does ownership of an idea work in this new economy? Doesn't the designer compromise their creative thought by having to deal with so many stakeholders? Can anything produced this way really be any good – or do we need to rebuild those ivory towers and put the designer firmly back in their place?"

Panelists Daljit Singh from Conran Singh, design writer Barbara Chandler, Nicolas Roope from POKE London and Plumen and Alexander Grunsteidl from Method will discuss this increasingly relevant and fascinating topic, with writer and Innovation consultant Nico Macdonald from Spy acting as moderator

Conran Singh is the Interactive Design Agency owned by Terence Conran and Daljit Singh and is part of the CONRAN group of design led businesses which includes Conran & Company (Brand Licensing), Conran & Partners (Architecture & Interior Design), Studio Conran (Product Design and Branding) and The Conran Shop (Design-led retail).

Getitmade.com is a new kind of marketplace where ‘crowdfunding’ allows designers, inventors and ideasmakers to take their creations from prototype to production.

Crowdfunding is investment via social media and the internet. It rewards innovation with orders: if enough people pre-order a product, their pledged capital pushes the product into manufacturing. For more information on getitmade.com and crowdfunding please contact Greta Corke at greta.corke@getitmade.com

Nico Macdonald is a writer and consultant focused on innovation and the creative industries. His clients include BBC Future Media & Technology and BT plc. He is co-author of BIG POTATOES: The London Manifesto for Innovation (bigpotatoes.org). Publications for which he writes include the Guardian, the RSA Journal and BBC News Online, and he is author of 'What is Web Design?' (RotoVision). He chairs the Media Futures Conference. His site is at http://www.spy.co.uk/

For more information about the event or to receive a press invite please contact Holly-Anne Rolfe at Conran Singh holly@conransingh.com or call 020 7827 4221