Michigan Launches Industrial Design Council

Michigan is setting up a new coalition to highlight and strengthen the state's industrial design base.

The Michigan Design Council is described as a cross-industry coalition of private, state and local partners. The organization will be led by Sundberg-Ferar, the 80-year-old Detroit-based product design firm.

The MDC plans a design competition next year. It also is mulling plans to create at least two "design meccas" enterprise zones covering as many as 10 square miles where multi-disciplinary design creative can gather to work, collaborate and build businesses.

The new council is backed in part by the Michigan Economic Development Corp., which has launched a parallel initiative to draw attention to the state's extraordinary concentration of engineers and technologists.