The Product Book is being launched as part of Design in Business Week, the Design Council’s annual programme of events aimed at highlighting the importance to business of effective design.

Design in Business Week ’99, launched at London’s new IMAX cinema, includes more than 40 events and partner organisations in a nationwide programme focusing on the theme ‘design in the knowledge-driven economy.’

Design Council Chief Executive Andrew Summers said of The Product Book: ‘We are delighted to be involved in this venture with British Steel and D&AD. It is very much in tune with the theme of our week and proves that, for at least two of the most influential organisations in business today, design is taken very seriously indeed.’

Writing in the book’s foreword, Design Council Chairman John Sorrell says: ‘The Design Council shares a very simple, very ambitious goal with every single product designer in this book - to improve our quality of life…The dawn of the new millennium is a wholly appropriate time to publish such a stunning collection.’