Can you believe it? This event marked 10 whole years of Design Matters, from its early days in Copenhagen to now-global events across Mexico City, Tokyo, Lagos, Singapore, and more.
The celebratory spirit snuck its way into every corner of Design Matters ‘24 in Copenhagen: A larger-than-life cutout of a birthday cake adorned the stage alongside this year’s speakers, and attendees received hardcover books looking back on 10 years of design. The festivities even appeared in the event program itself, with a decade’s worth of past speakers traveling to Denmark to reflect on Design Matters’ history and cast their predictions for the future.
Some Things Never Change
One constant about Design Matters: The venue never stays the same. Organizers Michael Christiansen and Giorgia Lombardo like to keep attendees guessing, with the event switching locations within Copenhagen every year. This time, over 1,000 attendees, speakers, and staff took over the Royal Danish Academy of Design in Christianshavn, squeezing 30 talks, 15 workshops, 3 night performances, 2 parties, a live podcast recording on sustainability, an open roundtable, networking sessions, an interactive exhibition, and countless mini activities into one iconic location.
If you know Design Matters, you also likely know host Sam Horner, who returned for his seventh year as ringleader of the event. Sam not only kept the energy high throughout the conference, but also sprinkled fun facts about each speaker into the program and (allegedly) got the slightest bit misty-eyed onstage at the conclusion of the final day.
With 10 years under its belt, Design Matters also announced that it will be trying something new next year: a summer conference on June 16-27, 2025, in Copenhagen and online. The event will be followed by an unmissable festival on digital design, in collaboration with 3daysofdesign, from June 18-20, pairing digital and physical design into one extended week of events. Tickets are available now, and the call for proposals is open.
Drumroll, Please… This Year’s Themes
As always, this year’s themes and speaker program were designed by designers, for designers thanks to the 2024 Design Matters Committee: a group of 11 past speakers who gathered to reflect on previous events, plan for the future, nominate speakers, and pontificate about the biggest and most important topics in design today.
The Committee is responsible for determining themes for that year’s event—another notable constant at every DM gathering over the years. Themes help provide a sense of purpose and focus for the conference, offering a chance to reflect on design’s role in the world and unify the community around a set of central ideas. After much discussion, the four themes of this year’s conference were… Give a Scrap, What Makes A Designer… A Designer?, The Value of Design, and There Is No Planet B.
Give a Scrap
This theme is all about how one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. We gave new life to old trends, rediscovering ideas, remixing compositions in brand-new ways, and reusing styles that were big in the Y2K era. In the name of recycling and upcycling, this theme looked at digital products and analog disciplines that are helping things find a new life.
We saw this theme come to life in dina Amin’s talk, “Making by Breaking,” which recounted how dina collects “trash-ure” from Cairo’s street markets and turns them into stop-motion animation pieces.
Mariana Pedroza also gave a talk on “A Guide for the Maximalist Designer in the AI Era,” proclaiming that “Less is Bore” and inspiring attendees to lean into the eccentric.
What Makes A Designer… A Designer?
We got a little existential with this one. Because we’re living in a time filled with change—everything from the invention of new technologies to destabilizing global conflict—which prompts us as designers to rethink what our careers should look like, and how we can leave a lasting impact on the world of tomorrow.
This theme digs deep into the many shapes a design role can take, exploring questions like, what are the career paths for designers, and the opportunities in between being an individual contributor and manager? How can we continue to inspire and be inspired, while avoiding burnout? And perhaps the most popular question of all, especially from parents… “What is it you do, exactly?”
This theme also explores what skills we need to stay relevant as designers. With new tools like AI becoming more available, what do we need to know to stay in demand? And now that AI assists in brainstorming, concept creation, generating design variations, and more, who can really claim to be a designer?
Batsirai Madzonga and Alastair Simpson each brought their own perspectives on this theme, speaking to the essentials of design and the importance of taste in today’s industry.
Expressing the Value of Design
Our third theme of the four. Because design really is found everywhere in life, and is so ingrained into every product we use every day, sometimes businesses don’t stop to reflect on the impact it truly has. So, how can we prove how much Design Matters?
Through the lens of these themes, speakers like Paula Madrid and Chappell Ellison explored the ways that design is valuable, ultimately articulating the impact of design to a business’ bottom line.
There Is No Planet B
That kinda says it all, doesn’t it? Technology is progressing fast, allowing us to do things we could never dream of before. But are we just chasing after the next new thing, or are we doing what’s best for our future? There are two sides of the coin to this theme: how we relate to one another, and how we relate to our environment.
On one side of the coin, there’s social responsibility. How do the products we design affect people, be it screen addiction, the spread of misinformation, or just nudging people to live healthier lives?
On the other side of the coin, there’s environmental sustainability: How might we encourage consumers to be more thoughtful about their purchases? And what new materials can we use to better support our planet? We heard much more about this theme in Christina Collura’s talk, “Eat, Save, Love: Engaging Heroes in the Fight Against Food Waste,” and Laura Krarup Frandsen’s talk on “How to Detect Climate BS.”
Workshops and Night Talks
Attendees also split into separate tracks for Workshops, beginning on day one and carrying through all three days of the event, with the team at Charlie Tango prompting designers to consider the long-term impacts of their design choices, and much more.
And then there were the night talks. Once the sun went down and stomachs were filled with vegan dinners and not-so-non-alcoholic drinks, Design Matters descended into trivia (with The Weiners winning for the second year in a row), laughs from cartoonist Edith Pritchett, and a healthy mix of butt illustrations and AI from Pablo Stanley.
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