an expanding sector, which employs over 2,800 people

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One thinks of design in Piedmont and the great names that have marked the history of Turin’s automotive industry immediately come to mind, from Giugiaro to Pininfarina, to their iconic models that have created and over time strengthened the image of design made in Turin and made the car designer profession famous. But today, Turin and Piedmont, strengthened by this consolidated production image, offer a much broader panorama: the design of the last two decades has followed new production trajectories, satisfying the demands of the market and the increasingly complex and diversified demands of the contemporary user. Design now pervades and distinguishes the “most recent” production sectors, from that of communication and multimedia, to the more general sector of services, linked to personal care, the hospital, IT, banking and financial sectors. To the point of becoming a fundamental ingredient for the numerous entrepreneurial, social and institutional projects linked to environmental sustainability and social innovation. An expanding sector which currently has more than 2,800 employees in Piedmont including freelance designers and those employed in studios and companies that offer consultancy services to manufacturing, service and third sector companies, mostly concentrated in the province of Turin, which groups together 66% of the employed – followed by Cuneo, Alessandria and Novara – with a prevalent specialization in Communication and Multimedia (50.7%), Product (18%), Spaces (13.4%), Fashion (8.3% ), Project Services (5.5%), Transportation (1.7%), Interaction (1.4%), Strategic and Service Design (1.1%). Data which testifies to a non-negligible expansion of the sector and which confirms those from the national survey by the Symbola Foundation, which in 2023 places Italy in first place among European countries and Turin in second place among the Italian provinces for people employed in Design. A sector characterized by the presence of over a thousand freelance designers, equal to 67% of the total employees, followed by 378 joint stock companies and 143 partnerships, which respectively constitute 24% and 9% of the sector’s employees, which are equivalent, following the national data of the Symbola Foundation, to 8.5% of Italian companies in the sector. Of all the Piedmontese provinces, Turin and Alessandria stand out for a hybrid occupational composition characterized by the co-presence of freelance designers, joint-stock companies and partnerships, connected to a composite design service offering in which connected projects stand out quantitatively and qualitatively communication, product and transport in the province of Turin and those attributable to the fashion sector, in the province of Alessandria. Turin confirms its role as a cultural and productive epicenter for the superior contribution both in terms of number of companies (66.6%), and in terms of employment (79.4%), also evident in the overall turnover which amounts to 550 million euros, equal to 85% of the region’s total turnover.