Millennium in design search

The New Millennium Experience Company (NMEC) has contacted at least four design agencies with a brief to create the Millennium project’s identity.

However, the NMEC is denying that it is in talks with any outside design consultancies and claims it already has sufficient design talent on board with creative director Stephen Bayley and M&C Saatchi, its advertising agency.

The organisation is required to register any project worth over 150,000 in the Official Journal of the European Community (OJEC). No tender has yet been registered.

A spokesman for the NMEC says: “Our corporate identity is in development and we are not in a position to discuss it at the moment.”

Design agency CDT was approached by the NMEC, but turned down the business because it felt there was too little time to come up with a suitable concept.

The NMEC has already been criticised for the secrecy surrounding the appointment of M&C Saatchi to its 16m advertising account.

The British Design Initiative is criticising the Government for not crediting the designers of products exhibited through the Millennium Products Scheme. According to BDI chief executive Maxine Horn, some of the designers are threatening to pull out of the scheme.