All the World's a Fair

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Talk Will Bind Us Together

It's not all about the Benjamins. Idea exchange and education provide Dutch Design Week's core catalyst: "Our aim is to bring designers together to talk about their work," says John Lippinkhof, general manager of Design Platform Eindhoven, organizers of Dutch Design Week every October. "It's not a commercial event. We ask designers to think about the design process... [and] the public gets invited into the kitchen." This self-organized event grew from a designers-only klatch 10 years ago to a weeklong public event in 2003, to 50,000 mostly Dutch participants in 2006, split equally among designers, the public, and industry groups like manufacturers and distributors. Sixty percent of the event's €1 million (US $1.3 million) in funding comes from the Dutch government, the city of Eindhoven, and the EU, with 40 percent coming from sponsors.

It's tough to quantify the value of dialogue, but the chance to gather consumer feedback must be useful. "People are curious: What's the input of the designer?" says Lippinkhof. "Design is a process [that's] unknown to the general public, also to most of  the industry." The so-called Dutch Living Rooms project revealed process directly by inviting designers to move their offices to the fairgrounds and work in a fishbowl. In the collaborative GreyTones project, graphic design firm Volle-Kracht worked onsite with spatial designers to create "The Human Freakshow," a blending of photography, graphic arts, and special effects. "We're the only event working on content," adds Lippinkhof. "Others will discover quite soon it's an attractive niche."

He's dead-on there. Budapest's three-year-old September design fair invites participants to hop an old Ikarus-model bus to take nine design-studio tours encompassing themes from jewelry to textiles to furniture. Another tramcar roves the city hosting an impromptu exhibit on a particular design focus. Eva Medgyes, curator of Budapest's Design Week, believes firmly that the free-of-charge Design Tours provide the crucial link between the public, designers, and the city itself. "The idea is to show people where designers ‘hide,'" says Medgyes, noting that many bus riders "return . . . as customers and commission-givers." About 1,500 of the event's 36,500 visitors last year took the tours, accompanied by multilingual guides.

Tamás Futó seconds Medgyes's assertion. As chairman of the Association of Hungarian Graphic Design Studios (MGSE), he exhibits winners of the annual Golden Thumbtack Prize at the Budapest Design Week. (Each year, the MGSE culls the best in Hungarian graphic design, awarding an old-fashioned gold thumbtack, which passes like a trophy from winner to winner.) "This exhibition of ‘everyday art' is interesting for everybody," Futó avers, citing as proof the 10,000 visitors last year to his mini-event.

Please Do Feed the Tourists

Budapest's approach suggests a more implicit economic driver behind the design week explosion: cultural tourism. As design grows increasingly synonymous with creativity and affluence, tourism departments have taken notice. Although Medgyes receives only logistical support from Budapest's tourism board—her 16 million HUF (US $84,000) budget comes from the Hungarian Patent Office, the Hungarian Design Council, and media sponsors—she plans to hitch her event to tourism trends that are bringing Budapest back into vogue. "Design spots and events are... a new target for incentive tourism all over the world," Medgyes says. Whether design events truly drove Prague's or Berlin's tourism (or simply symbolized their arrival to Western European standards) is up for grabs.