Liveryman Dids Macdonald OBE honoured by the BIID

The forthcoming British Institute of Interior Design conference on Thursday 18 June will see Liveryman and Second Assistant Dids Macdonald honoured for her services to design.

Taking place at the Royal Institute of British Architects , the BIID Annual Conference has set a precedent for some truly inspiring speakers and discussions. This year’s conference theme “Who Do We Think We Are?” aims to analyse the interior design profession, and to serve as a benchmark for the next 50 years, while also celebrating the Institute’s 50th anniversary.

The conference is open to all and you can register here to attend.

The BIID will also take the opportunity to honour the industry’s most inspiring individuals who have each had a profound impact on the development and success of interior design, with its Honorary Fellowships.

This year’s honourees include Dids Macdonald OBE, Christine Losecaat, Kevin McCloud MBE, Martin Roth, and Zeev Aram OBE, who will be in conversation during the conference.

Dids was a partner in a successful small company designing and producing decorative accessories, but with success came blatant copying every time a new product was launched and she nearly lost her business several times.

She spent considerable time fighting off the copyists and then co-founded a voluntary based round table action group in 1996 called Anti Copying in Design (ACID) to create a plan to help small “Davids” conquer global Goliath copyists. At the time (1996) there was no organisation to help designers protect their intellectual property.

ACID is now recognised as the leading UK design and Intellectual Property (IP) organisation, helping thousands of designers to protect their intellectual property through IP awareness.

After ACID’s 15-year campaign, history was made on 1 October 2014 when the IP Act became law. The intentional infringement of a registered design is now a criminal offence. 

ACID (Anti Copying In Design) is a membership trade organisation, set up as a round table action group in 1996, by designers for designers.

ACID is committed to raising awareness and encouraging respect, ethics and compliance for IP within individual and corporate responsibility. By helping its members to understand and protect their rights, ACID is intent on stamping out intellectual property rights abuse. To date there have been thousands of settlements and over 3500 mediations. See a short video here

www.acid.uk.com      @ACID_tweets       @didsmacdonald