Design thinking is used across product development, digital services, architecture, branding and wider business activity. UK evidence shows that its economic footprint extends well beyond specialist design agencies: in 2020, 77% of UK designers worked in non-design sectors, while the current Design Council series reports £136.7 billion in design-economy GVA in 2023.
Contents
- UK design economy size and growth
- Workforce and employment
- Adoption, investment and innovation
- Productivity, outcomes and exports
- Skills, education and diversity
- Regional and sector distribution
UK design economy size and growth
The Design Council’s earlier estimates put the UK design economy at £71.7 billion in approximate gross value added (GVA) in 2013, equivalent to 7.2% of total UK GVA. Of that amount, £52.5 billion came from designers working outside design industries, while design industries themselves generated £19.1 billion. These figures underline why design thinking statistics cannot be limited to agencies or studios: much of the value was created by design practitioners embedded in other industries. (The Design Economy)
Digital design contributed £30 billion, or 42% of total UK design-economy GVA, in 2013. Architecture and the built environment plus product and industrial design contributed a further £29.5 billion. Together, digital design, architecture and the built environment, and product and industrial design produced 83% of design-economy GVA in that year. (The Design Economy)
The same series reported 27.9% growth in design-economy GVA from 2009 to 2013, compared with 18.1% growth for the UK economy overall. Within design, digital-design GVA increased 39.3%, while multidisciplinary-design GVA increased 32.1% over that period. (The Design Economy)
Later estimates show the scale continuing to expand, although the measurement periods and series should be kept distinct. The Design Economy 2018 report recorded £85.2 billion in UK design-economy GVA in 2016, equivalent to 7% of UK GVA. It reported 10% growth from 2014 to 2016 and 52% growth from 2009 to 2016. The current Design Council series reports £136.7 billion in 2023, 40% above 2019. (Design Economy 2018; Design Economy)
Workforce and employment
Employment data gives another way to understand the reach of design thinking. The UK design economy employed 1.69 million people in 2016, and the number of design-intensive firms reached 78,030 in 2017. Design-intensive firms increased 63% from 2010 to 2017, compared with 3.7% growth for UK businesses overall. (Design Economy 2018)
In 2020, the UK design economy had 1.97 million workers, including 1.62 million designers. Employment grew 44% from 2011 to 2020, compared with 11% across all UK sectors. Design-economy employment also rose 4% from 2019 to 2020, while total UK employment contracted by 0.6%. These are period-specific comparisons and do not by themselves establish that design caused the difference. (Design Economy 2022: Mapping the UK design economy: people, places and value)
Design work is distributed across several large groups. Digital design employed 866,056 people in the UK in 2020, architecture and the built environment employed 424,748, and product and industrial design employed 225,013. The current Design Council series reports 2.27 million UK design-economy workers in 2025, 15% above 2020. (Design Economy 2022: Mapping the UK design economy: people, places and value; Design Economy)
| Measure | Reported value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| UK design-economy workers | 1.69 million | 2016 |
| UK design-economy workers | 1.97 million | 2020 |
| Designers within the 2020 total | 1.62 million | 2020 |
| UK design-economy workers | 2.27 million | 2025 |
Adoption, investment and innovation
UK firms invested £14.7 billion in design in 2015. In a 2017 survey, 60% of firms said they used design at some level on the four-step Design Ladder. However, 40% placed themselves on the bottom step, where design played only a small or peripheral role. Only about 25% employed staff whose role included design functions. (Design Economy 2018)
The survey placed design third among firms’ drivers of innovation, behind an R&D budget and R&D staff. More than 40% said design contributed to increased sales turnover, competitiveness, brand awareness or brand loyalty. These findings describe surveyed firms’ reported views and associations, rather than a controlled estimate of the effect of design thinking on every business. (Design Economy 2018)
Expectations also pointed toward continued demand. In the 2017 survey, 53% of firms expected demand for design-related skills to increase in their sector over the following three years, and 59% expected design to contribute substantially to at least one business-improvement activity over the same outlook period. Among firms that wanted to use more design, 88% said they needed support; financial support was the most popular request. (Design Economy 2018)
The Design Council’s 2022 report said 68% of UK businesses used design. That measure belongs to the 2022 report and should not be treated as directly interchangeable with the 2017 Design Ladder survey. (Design Economy 2022: Mapping the UK design economy: people, places and value)
Productivity, outcomes and exports
In 2016, UK designers produced £50,328 in GVA per worker, compared with £39,111 across the rest of the economy. Digital-design firms increased turnover 85% between 2009 and 2016. (Design Economy 2018)
Design also featured in international trade. UK digital design generated £27.9 billion in design-influenced exports in 2015, equal to 58% of all design-export value. In 2019, UK design-economy exports comprised £55.904 billion in services and £12.511 billion in goods. The two figures use different years and categories, so they are not a direct growth calculation. (Design Economy 2018; Design Economy 2022: Mapping the UK design economy: people, places and value)
Business survival provides another reported comparison. Design-led UK start-ups had a 60% survival rate beyond three years, compared with 44% for UK SMEs overall, in the 2016/2017 business-demography comparison. The Guardian reported almost four times as many print subscribers as an average week after its 2018 redesign. Both are specific examples or comparisons, not universal outcomes for every design-led organization. (Design Economy 2018)
The broader value of design skills was estimated separately from the design economy itself. Design skills contributed an additional £179 billion in UK GVA in 2019. Combined, the design economy and design skills were valued at £276 billion, equal to 14% of UK GVA in 2019. (Design Economy 2022: Mapping the UK design economy: people, places and value)
IBM reports outcome measures for organizations using IBM Enterprise Design Thinking: 2x faster time to market, 300% return on investment and 75% increased team efficiency. These are IBM-reported outcome measures, and the page was current in 2025; they should be read as reported results for that approach rather than as an independent estimate of all design-thinking programs. (Enterprise Design Thinking)
Skills, education and diversity
The 2016 UK design workforce had a relatively high level of formal qualification: 57.1% held a degree as their highest qualification, compared with 34% of UK workers overall. Average weekly pay in the UK design economy was £548, versus £539 for the UK average. Designers in UK design industries earned £609 per week, while digital designers earned £757, the highest pay among the reported design groups. (Design Economy 2018)
The education pipeline shows a sharp change in one measure. Entries for UK Design and Technology GCSE fell from 299,422 in 2010 to 95,694 in 2021, a 68% decline. In the 2022 Design Economy report survey, 69% of designers had a design GCSE, and the share holding a degree increased from 58% in 2016 to 62% in that report. (Design Economy 2022: Mapping the UK design economy: people, places and value)
Representation varied substantially by stage and role. Women made up 63% of UK university students studying creative arts and design in 2016, but women were 22% of the design workforce and 17% of UK design managers. Black, Asian and minority-ethnic workers represented 13% of the UK design economy, compared with 11% of the wider UK workforce. (Design Economy 2018)
Regional and sector distribution
Design activity was concentrated geographically but did not grow uniformly. Almost one in three UK design firms and one in five UK design workers were based in London in 2016. From 2010 to 2016, design GVA grew 83% in the West Midlands and 28.5% in the North West. (Design Economy 2018)
Between 2010 and 2019, digital-design GVA grew 138% to £53.9 billion. Multidisciplinary-design GVA grew 69% to £5.4 billion, while product-and-industrial-design GVA grew 54% to £16.3 billion. These sector figures show different growth rates within the wider design economy and place product and industrial design in a measurable, but not dominant, part of the overall total. (Design Economy 2022: Mapping the UK design economy: people, places and value)
London and the South East together accounted for 48.2% of UK design-economy GVA in 2019, compared with 38.4% of UK-wide GVA. Yet the strongest year-on-year regional growth in the same report was elsewhere: from 2018 to 2019, UK design-economy GVA grew 7%, while Scotland grew 27%, the West Midlands 19% and the North West 16%. (Design Economy 2022: Mapping the UK design economy: people, places and value)
Business size is another important part of the picture. In 2021, 92.2% of UK design businesses were microbusinesses with 0–9 employees, 6.5% were small businesses, 1.1% were medium-sized and 0.1% were large. The distribution suggests that design thinking is often delivered through very small firms as well as embedded teams inside larger organizations. (Design Economy 2022: Mapping the UK design economy: people, places and value)