DINGEMAN KUILMAN: DESIGN NEEDS A NEW OPERATING MODEL / WDCD2011

Dingeman Kuilman knows the design field from A to Z. He is a graphic designer by education and worked in different positions for several design agencies. In 1993, he became the first director of Premsela, a platform dedicated to strengthening the position of the Dutch design industry. Kuilman is currently chairman of the executive board of ArtEZ Academy of Art and Design.

Kuilman started his career at the famous Anthon Beeke Studio before working as a design strategist at Philips Design and FHV/BBDO. He was a member of the influential Arts and Design Committee (Arts Council), has taught at the Rietveld Academie, the Design Academy Eindhoven and the Academy of Management, and acts as chairman of the board of the Sikkens Foundation.

An observer of design culture from different angles, he stresses the need for a more critical and reflective approach to design, for the times, they are rapidly changing: ‘The fashion model and the art model followed by design are both worn out, and the economic value argument that sustained design in the 1990s now needs to be supplanted by thinking in terms of social and cultural value.’