All the World's a Fair

Are design fairs really effective in drumming up business, boosting education, and promoting awareness of tomorrow's next design capitals?

by Jude Stewart

Required: one capacious totebag for brochures, with bonus points if it rolls, levitates, or otherwise spares your back. Two pairs of shoes, one comfortable, one shamelessly frivolous. Annotated conference schedule; no detours! Your favorite pens for note-taking—better yet, a fully charged cell-phone cam. Protein-heavy snacks, ample patience, business cards, and a stopwatch.

Roger, check, check. You're now equipped to tour the world's growing number of design fairs.

Design fairs make big promises to participants and visitors alike: creative rejuvenation, intelligent debate, matchmaking for employees and partners, convenience for major buyers, a boon to design education, and for tourists, fun. Design fairs represent a new wave in how designers promote themselves. In the past three years, Europe has gone from the twin hegemony of London's 100% Design and Milan's Saloni Internazionale del Mobile—both furniture fairs—to a calendar thick with inclusive design events, many in the EU's emerging member states. As governments, sponsors, universities, and designers pour funds into these events, it's worth asking: Do they really work? What are they even aiming for?

The Rolling Wheel of Commerce

Even well past teatime, London Design Festival director Ben Evans is still buzzed. "In 2003 when we started, there weren't more than three or four comparable events around the world. Since then, we've seen at least 15 or 20 new events internationally." Evans predicts 50 design fairs within the next 10 to 20 years. "Just as every city has its own film festival, they now need a design festival, too."

The annual London Design Festival holds the crown as one of Europe's, if not the world's, largest design fairs. At 300,000 visitors from 32 countries and 208 projects exhibited in 2006—a three- and fourfold-plus increase over 2003—the September festival's size alone is a draw. Evans lists three of the festival's advantages for the industry: communication muscle, intensified networking, and developing new audiences, both upmarket and down. "London had all these great events happening, but they existed in little silos," Evans says. "Creating this platform made everyone's voices louder." The festival devotes most of its £420,000 (US $812,000) budget to publicity. (The federal and city government pay half; the rest comes from sponsorships and booth and ticket revenue.) Publicity is also its chief measurable ROI: Last year's 400+ media clips represent £2.5 million (US $4.84 million) in U.K. press value alone.

Evans is clearly delighted by the potential of new audiences. He's seeking to convert not just IKEA graduates but also the high-end market. "The top end of design is now attracting art prices," Evans continues. He sees design as the approachable alternative to contemporary art for ordinary Brits, too: "We've all got a sofa. It may be lumpy and feel like crap, but you can aspire to something better."

As the design world's commercial clearinghouse, London tracks surprisingly few hard ROI metrics. Evans cites participants' reluctance to share sales figures, but it's equally likely everyone rolls forward on faith. Like many of his sponsors and cohorts, Evans subscribes to economist Richard Florida's popular "creative class" theory: Cities that attract creative workers will benefit economically from the entrepreneurial wave that follows them. Critics contend that Florida confuses correlation with causation. Repeat attendance, Evans counters, proves designers think the fair works.

Metrics or no, the London event provides some clear commercial benefits: a coordinated, screened opportunity to transact business efficiently, hire and partner with others, and lure consumers, on a scale that guarantees press coverage. In other words, being the 800-pound gorilla counts for a lot.