Design Week’s pick of events to catch this September

From networking opportunities in Manchester to London’s biggest design event, September has a lot in store.

By Abbey Bamford

August 30, 2022
12:47 pm

August 31, 2022
5:04 pm

Podcast: On Design, with Justyna Green

Justyna Green is an illustrator and communications consultant with over ten years of industry experience and her podcast, On Design, is back this September. Guests will include Stefan Sagmeister, Ricardo Cavolo, Veronica Fuerte of Hey Studio, Sabine Marcelis, Suzie Hackney of LUSH.

Green’s podcast aims to facilitate honest conversations with inspiring figures in art and design. She tries to get to know them personally while exploring their career journeys and learning what inspires them.

This season’s conversation topics include happiness and beauty, sustainable packaging, women in design, Chinese design, and wellness for Gen-Z.

Episodes will be published weekly on Wednesdays and can be found on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Festival: London Design Festival

The 20th London Design Festival (LDF) will take place this September, with transformation and regeneration at the heart of the programme. With over 600,000 visitors every year – one third of them being from overseas – LDF is a great way for designers to showcase their work and be inspired by the work of others.

The events, exhibitions and installations are predominantly free and take place across various London locations, like the V&A, Design Museum and other design districts.

In line with its central themes, the festival is trying to improve accessibility and diversity. It will offer a 30% discount to new initiatives, ethnic minority-led activities, schools and universities, disability-led design and charitable projects. Students and recent graduates will also get a 50% discount on ticketed events and workshops.

LDF will run from 17-25 September, with V&A acting as the festival hub. The full programme is on the LDF website.

Course: The Drawing Gym 22

Design Museum London is hosting a three-part drawing course starting at the end of September. The course is meant for people at all levels and will use the museum’s permanent collection to teach participants different drawing techniques.

The idea behind the course is to have people use drawing as a communication and visualisation tool. The three sessions will be run by Trevor Flynn and Peter Ayres and will focus on different types of drawing skills.

The first session will cover isometric sketching and participants will use grids to make 2D and 3D sketches of geometric shapes and chairs from the museum’s collection. Session two will be centred around diagramming and in session three the learning focus will be sketch-notes, cartography and novel observation techniques.

For the duration of the course, participants will be able to access the Drawing Gym’s online Foundation course resources, including exercises and worksheets, for free.

The sessions will be on 24 September and 8 and 15 October. All sessions will run from 11:00-13:30 and the course is priced from £75-£90. You can book on the Design Museum website.

Networking Event: #DesignPopUp

Across a two-day event in Manchester, #DesignPopUp will provide its guests with opportunities to showcase their own work (booking a space is required) while networking and gaining inspiration from others.

Visitors can also enjoy a talk on virtual reality within interior design, where experts from 3DReid will explain how VR technology could help both designers and their clients. The event will take place in Manchester’s Hallé St Peters in the Ancoats area of the city, which has long-standing ties to its textile trade.

#DesignPopUp will take place from 22-23 September in Manchester. For more information, head to the #DesignPopUp website.

Talk: Conversations in Design: Grow your business

At this year’s Focus event at Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, a panel of creatives will talk about lessons they have learnt throughout their careers. Guests can expect valuable discussion topics, from entrepreneurial advice, to their how the experts approached different design disciplines.

Guest speakers include designer Faye Toogood, creative director of Buchanan Studios Angus Buchanan and creative director of Studio Enass Enass Mahmoud. Editor in Chief of Livingetc magazine Pip Rich will chair the panel.

The panel welcome people from all levels across the industry, whether they’re from a well-established design studio, a recently formed start-up, or if their business is still in the ideas phase. The talk will be followed by a book signing of Faye Toogood’s Drawing, Material, Sculpture, Landscape, published by Phaidon.

The talk will run start at 11:30am on 22 September on the first floor of Design Centre East. Tickets cost £10. Find out more on the Focus website.