On Monday the Danish Design Awards were presented by the directors of Design denmark and Danish Design Center along with His Royal Highness The Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and several Danish Ministers at the Confederation of Danish Industry. As members of Design denmark, we were participating at the event, celebrating the best Danish design solutions.
At the event the award baton was handed over to the newly appointed City Director Thomas Boe and CEO of Design2Innovate, Thit Juul Madsen as they are the hosts of the last part of the Danish Design Awards which will be presented in Kolding May 31. I was absolutely thrilled to see them take on the role and welcoming the Danish design industry to Kolding as part of the design festival. One of our primary pieces of advice and a central part of our strategy plan of 2012 was to roll out the new Kolding design brand externally by doing three very visible things:
- Become a World Design Capital (even thought Kolding is not a capital city)
- Create a leading international design festival (both for professionals and for everyone)
- Award the best Danish design solutions (alone or in partnerships)
Now, five years later that part of the vision and strategy plan is becoming reality which is a wonderful step for the city of Kolding, the companies and institutions in the region and for the citizens of the area. You can meet Thomas Boe in one of our case videos about the Kolding design brand process in his former role in the municipality where he talks about the importance of the process of finding and defining Koldings authentic strengths as a basis for further strategic development.
Case video with Director of Strategy Nikolaj Stagis from Stagis, City Director Thomas Boe from City of Kolding and Design Director Ulrik Jungersen from City of Kolding.
I think one of the great successes of the Kolding brand case is the focus on internal implementation which was our first and most important step in our strategic advice at the time. We suggested in a communications plan of 2013 that the municipality reorganized the communications staff into a central unit that would combine a secretariat concerned with implementing the design-vision and the communications of the municipality. In our case video which we shot in 2013, you can hear design director Ulrik Jungersen explain the function of the new unit and the house they got next to city hall. If you view the entire city branding case on our website you will also meet the city mayor Jørn Pedersen and see our large vision forum with more than 600 citizens, politicians and business leaders involved.
