Belgrade Design Walk European Design Leaders at BDW Athens, Stockholm, Zurich, Rotterdam, Vilnius, Helsinki. Next stop for the European Design Awards is going to be Belgrade. The ED-Awards grand ceremony is the one event of the year, when the best communication designers of the European continent gather in order to receive recognition for their work, benchmark with their peers and, on the side, party heavily! So, get ready to rub shoulders with Europe’s most accomplished creators in the field of print design, motion graphics, web design, branding and typography.
The ceremony is set to take place at the iconic Yugoslav Drama Theatre, on Saturday, the 8th of June. Tickets cost €50 and include entrance to the winners party at Brankow bar. The can be purchased at www.europeandesign.org/shop
European Design Leaders at BDW
The European Design Leaders is an élite organization. It is the one-of-a-kind professional club of Europe’s leading communication design studios and agencies. Its purpose is to provide a valid and comprehensive index of the most creative studios and agencies of the continent.
Size, history, client lists, nationality. All these do not matter. What does matter is proof that the studio is currently providing output of the highest caliber, by being consistently awarded in any of the five major design competitions around the world. Therefore, membership is closed and by merit only.
Five representative leaders of this group, coming from all over the continent, are making an appearance in this year’s Belgrade Design Week conference. Watch them in action and hear all about their creative processes, the way they work and how they have managed to reach the top of their class.
Belgrade Design Walk
A Design Walk, the most popular event of the ED-Awards programme, is a guided tour to local design agencies who have taken upon them to welcome you into their offices, answer your questions and showcase some of their work. This is a chance to meet great designers eye-to-eye on their home ground and a perfect way for international guests to experience the Belgrade design scene. Tickets cost €10 (€5 reduced) and can be bought at www.europeandesign.org/shop/.
Running in the morning through the city (down what the germans call a fussgangerzone) and being amazed by all the grand empty old buildings that reminded me of my Berlin beginnings. Grafitti on buildings. Lovely broken walls with acne'd facades from decades of reverse engineering.
Discovering that all the ships on the river were party boats and open till the morning. Sweating so much in one of the clubs, my phone got messed up. Losing phone in said club. Visiting belgrade police station to report a then stolen phone to a twenty-something cop with a doctor's lab coat, listening to Rammstein (loudly) while hacking out my report on a pre-electric typewriter that looked (and sounded) as if it was from some era before typewriters were invented.
Thinking of Naked Lunch. Thinking of Die-Hard. Listening to architects talk about porous facades. Thinking of old smart bombs. Imagining the flash and crunch of several floors of reinforced concrete collapsing in on themselves. Wondering why I'm the only interactive guy here. Why are there so many beautiful women in Belgrade? Why are there so many beautiful women in Belgrade?!
