Introduction

Design today is undoubtedly a creative industry of outstanding importance, and is one of the most important artistic-scientific-technological areas of our future. In the economies of knowledge-based societies, design – in addition to science and technology – is a determining aspect of innovation. Competitiveness today is primarily based on access to a new type of knowledge and the most up-to-date information, which in the case of design means the use of new generation materials and modern technologies.

Budapest Design Week, the festival of country-wide importance, present all around the Hungarian capital, is organised for the sixth consecutive year. This year's series of events – part of the official program of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation – focuses on the central theme, Creative Energies. The focus is on artists’ creativity and innovations, bringing the most recent results, up-to-date tendencies of the Hungarian and the international design world close to the wide public.

The exhibition of the Hungarian Design Awards is being organised as in previous years; there will also be a special Pecha-Kucha Night, a Finnish-Hungarian WAMP (Hungarian Design Market), while our discount initiative is also continued – this year 60 shops, showrooms and design workshops participate offering a 20% discount.

The emblematic opening program is Design Terminal’s exhibition titled Competing studying the competitiveness of Hungarian intellectual capital and showcasing a selection of products that held their ground on the global scene and were created with the participation of Hungarian designers.

New program elements are the Design Management Award founded by the Hungarian Design Council and Design Terminal’s Open Studios initiative, in the framework of which the workshops, studios of 16 contemporary Hungarian designers can be visited.

The program of the 2009 Budapest Design Week is exceptionally rich in creative workshops organised for both children and adults – we paid a special attention to involve the youngest generations in the events of the festival. The aim of the DESPLAY and DEMO programs is to make the world of design more tangible, more understandable through playful and stirring design lessons.

Amongst the wide range of international design programs, Finnish and Danish design play an important role; the star guest of this year’s Budapest Design Week is Harri Koskinen, while Finnish exhibitions and programs await visitors in the Museum of Applied Arts and the Museum of Ethnography.

The exhibition titled Swiss Design in Hollywood also presents the work of international artists, just like the Danish INDEX 2007, but we can also find out why Turkish design is so good and can get to know the work of the Red Dot Award winning Polish designer group, Moho, as well as the life-work of Danish Jacob Jensen.

During the past five years, Design Week has become a professional, internationally acclaimed festival, which is also indicated by several elements of its communication. The addition to the official name – using the word Budapest – distinguishes the event from other European design weeks. The new logo, as well as the complete visual system planned to be the creative basis for years to come, all serve the same purpose. Our city-wide poster, vehicle advertisement and flag campaign promote the importance of the design festival, and also my personal belief that everything is design and everything we have is design, as the famous American graphic designer, Paul Rand so passionately put it: Design is everything. Everything!

Rita Mária Halasi
curator
Budapest Design Week