In the first week of May, the design COLLABORATION brought the city of Zlín and the entire virtual world to life. The Best in Design awards, a fashion show, and a great concert by DJ Young Aesthete. That’s how the week-long festival started, but it certainly didn’t end there. What was behind the relaxed atmosphere that will be in the air until at least next year?
We didn’t let the recommended restrictions intimidate us either, but we had to partially adapt to them. One of the three pillars of the entire festival was the announcement of the Best in Design competition, which broke out on Friday, May 7 at 7 pm. The whole evening was hosted by actor and singer Jan Cina and broadcast via YouTube. This year’s winner and the holder of the title Best in Design 2021 was Ondřej Pechal and his design project – the Edudant radiator, congratulations!
This year’s Zlin Design Week Conference was also a great success. In the online format, it offered 7 videos and a total of 6 speakers from both the Czech Republic and Slovakia who shared their stories in podcasts. Automotive and industrial designer Marek Weidlich, owner of IOKO optics Dana Prekopová, or innovation leader Marvan Shama. These are some of the several speakers who shared their personal experiences and insights into their perceptions of collaboration within design and marketing. You can listen to the recordings on our website and listen to the podcasts via Spotify.
Workshops? There was no shortage of those either. Design thinking with Grow with Google, Mocup.Space or a demonstration of what you can create with Canva.
The whole accompanying program was also complemented by two panel discussions, which gave aspiring designers and brands an insight into how to engage the media and start building their careers. Vojtěch Frajt from 2Media, Nikola Lörinczová from PÍÁRISTI agency, Eliška Černá from Radio Wave, Tereza Dolinová from CZECHDESIGN, and Eva Slunečková from Elle Decoration magazine. Their experience can also be drawn from the recording on our Facebook page.
And what about the exhibitions? One of them, which you can visit on our website until 31 May, presents dozens of international examples of collaboration between young designers, studios of universities from the commercial and non-commercial sphere. Together with it, under the leadership of curator Adam Štech and the OKOLO group, an exhibition called Together: stories of collaboration has been created. These are developed in the form of minute-long videos and are available directly on the festival’s YouTube.
And because when you say Zlin Design Week, those familiar with the topic will surely think of a box labeled party. The dance group All Style Unit, a performance by TELETEXT or a musical delight for the soul from dné. All this was running and is still waiting on our channels.
“We are very happy that this year’s Zlin Design Week – even in a slightly different format – took place, and above all, a big thank you to everyone who was in it together with us. Whether our partners, the university, the city of Zlín, all the judges, speakers and above all the designers themselves,” said Jitka Smolíková, the festival’s general manager.
Moments of comfort in the park, good food and drinks, and most importantly a group of people with a common interest – to experience Zlin Design Week that is over now. But we are not lazy and we are already making plans for the next year, which will start from 6 May to 13 May 2022.
