What is Designers Association Singapore (DAS)

Singapore, a city state of 4.8 million people, located at the tip of the Malaysian Peninsula, was founded in 1819, when Sir Stamford Raffles of the East India Company established a trading settlement in Singapore. The meeting point for Chinese, Malays, Indians, Arabs, Europeans and others on their journey through the southern seas, Singapore achieved its initial economic success through international trade as a free port and free market. Given the status of an independent country in 1965, Singapore suddenly found itself in a struggle to survive. It’s small population and scarce resources meant that regional and world markets were larger than the domestic market, presenting the government and its policymakers with distinctive economic challenges and opportunities. This chapter tries to recount the policies and subsequent actions put in place in Singapore from the 1960s till the present, promoting the creative industry, including product design, in order to transform a market dependent economy into a service centered economy. This chapter also discusses if and how such a ‘planned intervention’ played an important role in building up the resources and infrastructure within Singapore and in attracting multi-national companies to locate their R&D and design facilities in Singapore, pointing to where it has succeeded and where it has not.