a | A
Vous êtes ici : Accueil / ENGLISH / Who are we?

The French Designers Alliance

The merger of four principal French design unions

December 2001: closing of the activity of the Syndicat national des graphistes SNG (French Union of Graphic Designers) on the initiative of Chiristian Dao (President), François Caspar (Vice-President) and of François Weil (Administrator), with the perspective of creating a new multidisciplinary union, federating all designers. 2002 is a year of reflection and of debates on the modalities of the creation of a new organization. January 2003: birth of the Alliance Française des designers (French Designers Alliance) AFD on the initiative of François Caspar (President), Christian Dao and François Weil. December 2003: fusion of the AFD with the Syndicat des designers d’environnement SDE (French Union of Environment Designers), on the initiative of its president Bruno Lefebvre. 
In 2004, the Union française des designers industriels UFDI (French Union of Industrial Designers) fusions with the AFD on the initiative of its president Marc Piel. Finally, in early 2009, the Syndicat national des designers textile SNDT (French Union of Textile Designers) fusions with the AFD on the initiative of its president Sylvie Megret and with its Board of Directors.

This is the first time in France that such a federating movement materializes. Clearly, today designers can no longer permit themselves to remain isolated. Following the example of other European countries, we aim to gather designers from all disciplines and all statutes within the heart of a strong organization, to give our profession a real visibility and influence decisions, that determine our operating conditions.

Today the first

The Alliance française des designers, largest Professional multidisciplinary design union in France and largest by the number of its members, represents designers regardless of their disciplines and their legal form (owner of a private company, freelancing as a member of a professional organization such as the Maison des Artists or Agessa, salaried employee.
    The AFD is run on a volunteer basis by product, space or message designers, with experience from working in companies or as freelancers in different regions of France.
The associative functioning of the design union is democratic and open to each member’s point of view. To join and vote, is to take an active part in the life of one’s profession. It is up to the members to make known their ideas to the Board of Directors. Of course, non-members can propose their points of view. If you have any contributions to formulate on actions carried out by the AFD, we invite you to invest yourself in proposing your ideas and by becoming a member to defend them.

Three words

Alliance evokes the meeting about the common objectives of professionals concerned with the future of all forms of design and their legal context. Alliance presupposes the evolution of the life of a structure – a crossroads – open to all of the components of our disciplines.

Française (French) because we represent the professionals of all our regions. Française, in the spirit of sharing and in the promotion of the most valorizing legislation for our professions, on the community level, along side organizations of the other European countries.
Designers to signify the opening toward all components of the disciplines of design, and of our resolutely transversal vocation, whatever may be its statute. Designers to underline the evident complementarities between our disciplines and the tendency to respond « together » to the needs of the market, hence several examples of this synergy: architects and graphic designers specializing in signalatech and scenography, textile designers and clothing designers, interior designers and furniture designers, etc.