BRANKOPOPOVICBLOG: Zlin Design Week 2023

award ceremony performance

The Zlin Design Week festival took place from 3 to 10 May. The programme of the ninth editions of the festival introduced visitors to universal design principles at various locations in Zlín. Build around the theme of “Design for All” the programme focus was inclusivity in design. This years edition contained Best in Design Competition exhibition, Fashion Show of young designers, parties, award show, a conference and so on.

Like last yeas I have been invited to take part in the jury panel of Best in Design competition. In addition, I took part in a panel by Design CANTEEN. Together with Jeffrey Heiligers from 1m2 Collective the conversation involved inclusivity in festivals.

The Design for All exhibition offered an overview of how universal design involves our lives, with several examples of specific solutions.
“Our intention was to see the exhibition as a place where a clothing designer, a furniture company owner, an urban architect, and a local cultural enthusiast can meet, and the projects on display can pass on something to each of them – a reflection on the value of design in our lives, on what a universal and inclusive approach brings to us, a spark for debate about the possible barriers we all commonly encounter. We are very pleased that the curators Thea Urdal and Herman Greng Billett from Norway and the duo of Slovak architects Tomáš Tholt and Danica Pišteková have been involved in the preparation,” says festival director Jitka Smolíková.
The exhibition was set in building 61 of the former Bata industrial complex.

Best in Design Competition for Young Designers

Zlin Design Week supports new talents who want to discover and develop new paths for design and they do so with the “Best in Design” competition for creatives under 30. The finalists of the fourteenth edition of the competition were exhibited at the G18 Gallery. The exhibition provided a space for connecting clothing, visual communication, and industrial solutions, products, and services.
The work of the finalists and winners across the past years of the “Best in Design” competition is presented in a Fashion show set in the unusual space of the Tomas Bata Memorial in Zlín. The Fashion show with respect to the Tomas Bata Memorial will take place on 10 May, preceded by a programme of discussions and workshops related to the universal design and inclusive fashion festival theme.

Winners of Best in Design competition 2023 are:
Fashion Design category winner is Marija Petraityte from Lithuania. In the fashion category second and third place was taken by Katarína Mydliarová and Jana Vaterková.
Michal Zmek won third place in the Product & Industrial Design category, the second place went to Timea Kepová and the first place to Zuzanna Wójcik.
Tereza Vašková placed third in the Service Design category, Alina Karl took the second place and the winner of this category was Matêj Malecha.
In the Communication category, co-creators Tim Stange and Fabian Meyer shared the third place, Julie Ditetová won the second place and the winner was Adrián Gubrica with impressive Mariupol Memoirial project.
And the overall winner of the entire Best in Design competition is none other than Zuzanna Wójcik!

More about the competition: zlindesignweek.com

Accompanying programme

The ZDW festival creates a platform for young designers, professionals, and the public to meet. Special installations were places in public spaces throughout Zlín, prepared in cooperation with festival partners and other designers. Visitors could broaden their horizons during discussions on the podcast platform “Design CANTEEN” or during guided tours.
Various workshops gave design lovers the space to involve their own creativity, while at the one-day design market, they can buy something from the offer of selected Czech and Slovak brands in a Pop-up Shop.
At the same time, other exhibitions are taking place in Zlín and its surroundings, such as Inspiration: Le Corbusier at Zlín Castle, which presents the ideas of the great 20th-century architect and the work of Czech and foreign designers who are inspired by modernism and brutalism of the last century.

Zlin Design Week
Zlin Design Week is a week-long design festival where everyone can find inspiration. Through the festival, we are creating for the ninth time a platform for presentation, expression, sharing, unexpected connections, and meeting young designers with professionals. We support young talents and bring fresh air to the design field. The project was created in 2015 at the Faculty of Multimedia Communications at Tomas Bata University in Zlín thanks to the interdisciplinary collaboration of design, marketing, photography, and audiovisual.

www.zlindesignweek.cz