The Design Policy Beacon is an evidence-based online resource that raises awareness on design policy actions across the EU through design interpretation and data visualisation.
The aim is to support the growing community of policymakers who are working to make design a key part of national, regional and local policies for innovation and growth. Building on the premises and description of design policy actions given by the Design Policy Lab at Politecnico di Milano, the Beacon mainly searches and visualizes the network of initiatives and organisations in support of design in different European countries. Further, it interprets this complexity using data visualisation as the main strategy and reading the resulting most pressing issues, thus answering questions like: what type of investments have been made to support design? What has been achieved? Who is investing in this area?
Providing this information, the Beacon wants to help policymakers share stories and insights, connect and build an international network working to address similar design-related challenges.

In the Landscape section can access the design policy ecosystems that we have reviewed so far by selecting a country on the map. Click on a marker to display the country related ecosystem.

The framework section guides you in understanding the teorethical model behind the Beacon. We developed this framework based on 7 categories of investment for policies in support of design.

The catalogue section provides all policies so far collected into the Beacon, which can be sorted and filtered by specific parameters.

If you are interested in collaborating with us to map your design policies or your own design policy ecosystem, we invite you to find all informations in the dedicated section.