Anna Studman, Senior Research and Impact Manager at the Design Council, introduces new research in the form of Design Economy 2026.
Design is a critical enabler of growth across the UK economy, powering the creative industries and beyond, but it’s often underappreciated. ‘Design’ can otherwise be thought of as ‘critical problem solving,’ and is therefore vitally important for meeting the big challenges of our time. But its broad utility can also make it hard to define as a sector in its own right.
New research from the Design Council, Design Economy 2026, aims to communicate and visualise the impact design has – in GVA, jobs, exports and powering local industries.
What we’ve found is a headline story of impressive growth: design contributed £136.7bn of GVA in 2023 (up 40% since 2019) and employed 2.27 million people in 2025 (up 15% since 2020). This compares with Creative UK’s estimate of creative industries GVA at £148.9bn (in 2025). We saw growth in design economies across the UK: the fastest increases were seen in Wales and the North East for GVA and in the East Midlands and South West for employment.
What does Design Economy tell us about the creative industries?
The ‘design economy’ encompasses design industries (those that we’ve identified as having a 30% or higher proportion of its workers in design occupations) as well as designers working throughout other sectors such as finance, healthcare, hospitality and manufacturing.
Though the design industries and creative industries are not exactly the same, there are overlaps. Our research groups the design industries into six categories: architecture and built environment, clothing design, craft, digital design, multidisciplinary design and product and industrial design.
The research presents more of a mixed picture for the specific design industries, in which just 20% of UK designers work.
The design industries’ combined GVA was £46bn in 2023, up 59% since 2019. This is faster growth than the design economy overall (40%), but has been driven almost entirely by digital design, worth £34.8bn in 2023 – an 81% increase since 2019. The digital design industries encompass things like software and video game publishing, and computer programming. Digital design was the ‘star’ performer of the design economy overall – but the full impact of AI on the workforce remains to be seen, with the data from the past two years indicating that growth in this area has slowed.
Breaking down the 15% employment growth figure for the design economy overall, employment within the design industries grew 6%, compared with a 20% increase in jobs for designers outside the design industries. Most of the employment growth in the design industries was in London and the North East.
This suggests that more designers are working in house – and demonstrates the value of design skills to all kinds of businesses – but it also indicates a more challenging landscape for design firms and agencies. There’s been a general downward trend in the number of design firms between 2021 and 2025 and the only place to see a material increase was Northern Ireland (though it also has the fewest design firms overall).
Where next for the design economy: workforce inequalities and the impact of AI
Workforce diversity in design remains an issue, showing that growth alone is not a complete measure of economic success. Like the creative industries, design is heavily male-dominated (75% of designers are male*). There is also an underrepresentation of Black designers as compared to UK workforce (2% in the design economy vs 5% in the broader workforce).
Stats on design education suggest that inequalities are being further cemented for the future workforce. In the context of a precipitous drop in D&T GSCE entries over the past 10 years, we know that 60% of the most disadvantaged schools have no D&T entries, compared with 17% of most advantaged schools. When 46% of creative employers rely on word-of-mouth to recruit, industry and education providers must be supported to strengthen inclusive pathways from education into employment and widen access to design careers.
This situation may be compounded by AI, which risks perpetuating and entrenching workforce inequalities. Design has a crucial role to play in creating a distinctive model of AI adoption that is human-centred, trusted and inclusive. We are proposing a Design for AI Adoption Challenge, a series of interventions bringing together designers and technologists in the private and public sector to collaborate on building evidence, re-imagining standards and testing AI-enabled services with public value at their heart.[8]
It’s clear that design is a high-growth sector, but as Design Economy Ambassador and Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose Professor Mariana Mazzucato argues, we must ask what direction growth takes and who benefits from the value that design creates. Design Economy provides a powerful foundation for the sector to enable good growth that empowers the economy alongside communities and the planet.
