What better way to bypass the dreaded January blues than planning a jam packed schedule of cool design events to attend in the coming months of 2018. From service design events to Design Festivals, we’ve trawled the web to bring you our top picks for the year ahead!
Check out the events….
21st–23rd February Design Indaba – Cape Town, South Africa
Design Indaba is more than a conference. This event brings an immersive experience to people who use design to innovate, with great talks, and also live music, theatre, fashion shows, dance and product launches.
25th January Creating Healthy Cities through Service Design – London, UK
The speakers at this event are service design practitioners with fascinating experiences of designing for health, tackling challenges such as healthcare, air quality, noise levels, mental and physical health. Get yourself to London to explore the role service design can play in making cities healthier.
7th–9th March Service Design in Government Conference – Edinburgh, UK
The Service Design in Government Conference is a hands–on, practical conference that draws an international audience of top service designers and world leading speakers. Participants will enjoy meeting and learning from a great bunch of peers and leaders in the industry. You’ll leave with great new ideas and skills to improve public services, an increased professional network, and memories of many interesting conversations.
6th–8th March Innovation by Design Conference – Singapore
Part of Singapore Design Week, the Brainstorm Design Conference looks at how organisations must embrace design as part of their corporate strategy if they are to grow and innovate.
24th–26th April D&AD Festival 2018 – London, UK
D&AD Festival is a three–day creative spectacular celebrating the world’s best design and advertising, hosted in the heart of London’s East End at The Old Truman Brewery. Check out a wide range of cool exhibitors and maybe a beer or two!
24th – 25th May What Design Can Do Festival – Amsterdam, Netherlands
What Design Can Do festival explores the contribution of design to climate action. Our very own David Kester helps to host the WDCD Live Amsterdam Festival again this year and it will be bringing together experts from the fields of climate action, design, business and government.
22nd–24th May Clerkenwell Design Week – London, UK
This smaller festival in arty Clerkenwell provides a showcase of leading UK and international designers, brands and companies across showroom events, exhibitions, live talks, workshops and installations and it’s free to attend!
4th–7th June Polishopa – Bydgoszcz, Poland
This 4 day event is entirely devoted to design thinking methodology. The event is split into 2 presentation panels, Revolution Day and Innovation Day, and with 2 days of workshops afterwards. 5th July Future Festival London Innovation Conference Trend Hunter’s London innovation conference offers a program of engaging speakers, multimedia rich presentations, data–driven research and much more! It gives innovators a chance to exhibit their prototypes for the future.
28th–31st August UX Australia – Melbourne, Australia
This 4 day event, split into 2 days of talks and 2 days of workshops, is based around user experience. So whether you’re wanting to hone your user design skills or hear the latest thinking, this conference is for you!
15th–23rd September London Design Festival – London, UK
London Design Festival is an annual event, held to celebrate and promote London as the design capital of the world and as the gateway to the international creative community. Supported by the Mayor of London, this festival is made up of multiple exhibitions, talks and installations in various places across the city.
19th–22nd September 100% Design – London, UK
The show is the main event of the London Design Festival, with over 27,000 visitors to the show across 4 days. Visiting the show is an audience of architects, designers, specifiers, retailers and developers, as well as multinational companies looking to source products and services for their latest design projects.
20th–23rd September London Design Fair – London, UK
Located in the creative heart of East London, the London Design Fair is a 4 day event that brings together 500 exhibitors from all over the world, including leading designers and brands.
11th–12th October Design Thinking Conference – Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Design Thinking Conference is an interactive and high–energy meet–up of experienced design thinking practitioners from around the world. Run by our partners, Design Thinkers Academy in Amsterdam, this conference offers a platform to share knowledge and find new perspectives.
24th–25th October RGD DesignThinkers – Toronto, Canada
The Associated of Registered Graphic Designers have been hosting an annual DesignThinkers event for over 18 years where they explore the processes of design and creativity. At last year’s event topics included Strategy, Inspiration, Interaction and Trends. Book your ticket to Toronto for this exciting conference!
