Design Indaba showcases South Africa’s creative talent

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Design Indaba: Showcasing South Africa's best design talent

© Design Indaba

Design Indaba 2013 kicks off with the Design Indaba Conference (27 February to 1 March) at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, and is followed by the Design Indaba Expo (1 to 3 March) at the same venue.

The Design Indaba Expo provides a valuable platform for South Africa’s design talent to showcase their work to a global audience, while the Design Indaba Conference enables South Africa’s creative design community and the world’s design experts to share trends and insights.

The Design Indaba Expo offers three days of creative inspiration, showcasing exceptional South African design across all creative disciplines, ranging from architecture, jewellery design and fashion to visual arts, craft, industrial design and everything in between. You’ll be spoilt for choice with things to see, do and experience – there are more than 400 exhibitors on the Expo floor; all-day fashion shows; music by top South African artists; a Miniplex screening three-minute documentaries; pop-up restaurants; and a film festival.

There are also interesting talks taking place. Don’t miss the fascinating talk by Anthony Silverston of Triggerfish, the Cape Town animation studio that produced South Africa’s first feature-length animation film, Adventures in Zambezia. You can also listen to magazine doyenne Jane Raphaely – chairperson of Associated Magazines – talk about her autobiography, Jane Raphaely Unedited, and meet United Kingdom-based Daniel Charny, who is launching his new initiative, Fixperts, in South Africa at the Expo.

Design Indaba is also showcasing the talents of 42 new young designers who have been selected for the 2013 Emerging Creatives programme.

This year’s Design Indaba Youth workshops offer a range of fun sessions that include creating flying wind sculptures, turning paper into jewellery, creating skateboard graphics, and stop-motion movie animation.

Food is another creative experience, and visitors can tuck into tasty treats from funky pop-up restaurants (Beijing Opera, Ma Mere Maison, Queen of Tarts, and The Creamery) and food trucks (Limoncello, El Burro, The Good Life, Durban’s Finest Curry and The Juice Deli) on the Expo floor.

This year’s Design Indaba Conference has attracted some of the world’s top creative minds. More than 40 local and international speakers will discuss global design trends and challenges. The line-up includes:

• David Adjaye – principal architect of Adjaye Associates and visiting professor at Princeton University School of Architecture, who has won a number of prestigious global commissions. He is currently redesigning the Smithsonian National Museum of African American Culture and History in Washington, DC.
• Sir John Hegarty, whose multi-award-winning advertising agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, has been responsible for many groundbreaking Levi’s commercials and also coined the famous phrase ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ for Audi.
• Paula Scher – renowned graphic designer whose work is featured in the permanent collections of several prestigious museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the Library of Congress in Washington, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
• Seymour Chwast – contemporary visual communications expert and founding partner of celebrated Push Pin Studios.
• John Maeda – an artist, graphic designer, computer scientist and educator who has been named one of the 75 most influential people of the 21^st century by Esquire magazine.

South African Tourism (SAT) has also sponsored the attendance of several speakers, journalists and one of the world’s top chefs. Among these are:

• Benjamin Terrett, head of design at the UK's Government Digital Service.
• Alex Atala – renowned Brazilian chef who changed the face of modern Brazilian cuisine when he introduced local Brazilian ingredients into his celebrated dishes at his restaurant DOM in San Paolo in 1999.
• Nick Compton, features director at UK design-inspired magazine Wallpaper.

SAT has also facilitated the attendance of several other speakers, including Catalonian designer Marti Guixé and visual artist Jeanne van Heeswijk.

SAT is proud to be associated with Design Indaba 2013, which is the perfect showcase for South African design, lifestyle and culture, giving young up-and-coming design talent exposure to the world’s leading creatives and experts in the design field.

Design Indaba 2013 will also give travellers to Cape Town a taste of what they can expect from the city named World Design Capital 2014 by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design. This prestigious designation is given to cities dedicated to using design for social, cultural and economic development.

Tickets for the Expo are available at the door or from Computicket.