The BCN Design Week, organized yearly by BCD Barcelona Design Centre, is an international business focused congress framed in the field of design and aimed at those companies and professionals in any industry or productive services that use knowledge and creativity as a driver of its business activity.

The various events and activities included within the BCN Design Week offer the attendees the opportunity to learn, share and delve into varied design related topics, in order to promote Barcelona as a city of creativity, design and knowledge, strengthening the relationship between business and design and fostering greater understanding and awareness of design and its strategic value.

This year the BDW will celebrate its fourth edition positioned as a leading event for promoting and debating design and a date on the international calendar that can’t be missed. From 26th to 30th of October, businesses of diverse productive or services sectors, professionals and experts of the world of design as well as prestigious speakers will give themselves appointment in a platform of experiences in which the main topics to be addressed are Design Thinking & Creativity, Design Management, Mobile Design or Family business and Creativity, among other topics.

www.barcelonadesignweek.es

The aim of Vienna Design Week is to show and enable people to experience the many-faceted creative work in the fields of product, furniture and industrial design, but also positions of experimental design. Design has been and is an important field in the production of culture: it shapes our material culture, our everyday life and our consumer world, it influences our lifestyles and fashions and most fundamentally our aesthetic sense and judgements. This wide-ranging impact is a reason both to celebrate design and to examine it critically, and VIENNA DESIGN WEEK has made both of these its mission.

In cooperation with many partners – from Vienna museums to production and retail companies to designers from all over the world – the whole of Vienna becomes a platform and showplace of design. Vienna Design Week doesn’t have the character of a trade fair but instead offers a variety of venues and approaches specific to Vienna. The festival sets out to be “international but localised”, with an abiding interest to cooperate with the flourishing design scenes of Central and Eastern Europe, and certainly beyond. Bringing to Vienna an important international design show every October is another example of the long-due international exchange Vienna Design Week is stimulating.

www.viennadesignweek.at

Helsinki Design Week is the largest design event in Finland. Produced for the fifth time, HDW will take place in September, and offers gripping workshops, seminars, exhibitions, workshops, fashion shows, installations, shopping opportunities, open-door visits to studios and closed-for-public spaces, as well as mingling by night.

“Challenges for the mind, statements and action”. This year Helsinki Design Week rolls up the sleeves of designers and brings forth the processes behind design. “Do Touch!” theme is embedded in the events that encourage visitors to familiarise with and take part to the design world.

www.helsinkidesignweek.com

Designersblock, is more than a design show, it’s a culture that has grown over 18 years with 45 Design Shows produced in 13 Cities, in 10 Countries, with over 1000 exhibitors from 30 Nations.

Designersblock London attracts an active and dedicated UK and International audience of Architects, Interior designers, Cultural & Educational institutions, Retailers, Curators, Designers, Journalists, Trend spotters and Public. This year in addition to the 12th annual London show taking place in Central London, exhibitors will have the opportunity to present work and concepts in 100% Design at Earls Court. Attendance in 2008 was around 10,000. 100% Design attracts 26,000 visitors.

The next edition will have exhibitions by: Gillian Soong, Seung Kwan No, 44 Spaces, Malin Kallman, Asma Hussain, Maezm, Will Carey, Ercol, J-Me, Joon & June, Ella Doran, Cate & Nelson Design, Victor Gama, Alicja Wasielewska and Puff & Flock, among others.

www.verydesignersblock.com