The First Belgrade Design Week Festival

The First Belgrade Design Week festival sets out with a two-day conference market², a first ever “speed-dating”-project of the most important creatives in the Serbian advertising scene, all gathered at one place and in one day. On the first day, The most significant local advertising, branding and design agencies as well as independent experts, will showcase their most successful projects in fast-moving, stimulating 20-minute individual presentations. Agency owners, creative directors, independent art directors and designers will all be offered an opportunity to point out and illustrate the differences in the methodology of their creative processes before an agency-buying professional public and VIP representatives of the regional industry, media and administration.

If you ever wondered how and where to choose an agency in Serbia, custom-tailored to fit your needs, this is the right day for you. 

The second day of the conference market², is at least equally interesting. It is dedicated to roundtables with discussions on the four most important branches in the future development of business in Serbia – commerce, the industry of food and beverages, tourism and finally the entertainment&media industry. Directors of the largest retail networks, banks, etc, will discuss triumphs and flops in the retail war for power in the streets of Serbia; directors of the leading media houses, producers and creatives will cross swords and join issues about the development of Belgrade as the centre of the entertainment industry in a region covering 50 million people; the leading experts in tourism, historians and publicists will discuss identity programs for the City of Belgrade, applicable to tourism; creators of established and new food brands from Serbia will go into details about strategies of penetrating new global markets.

You will have first-hand knowledge of how the major decision makers in the Serbian market think, act and what their plans for the future are. 

The third and the fourth day are reserved for the central event of the festival: a two days branding conference, the brand². This event can change the business-scape of Serbia forever, as 20 of the most important global experts bring their priceless experience as brand-leaders, both as owners/managers of the most important global brands and as their creators/designers!

This kind of a branding mega-stars line-up, all at one place, has probably never been seen anywhere since the 12 apostoles! Already in the first announcement of the festival the BDW received booking for over 50% of the total number of tickets from international delegates.

An equally spectacular event, for all those who understand the significance of design in the modern world, is a two-day conference design², taking place on the fifth and the sixth day of the festival. Its focus is the ‘tangible’ design: product and fashion design. Guests and participants at the first day are the globaly biggest design-celebrities, who never before lectured at the same conference together: Gaetano Pesce, Karim Rashid, Konstantin Grčić, Ross Lovegrove, Luigi Colani…, as well as the Serbian stars of global design: Branko Lukić, Saša Lakić, Darko Mladenović… – who will help us recognize and appreciate the importance of design in the battle for a good marketplace.

The festival closes with an afternoon session dedicated to fashion.  All these years, fashion has been in the focus of the domestic public, but never in such a way and never with such guests. Why and how is fashion inextricably linked to creating and managing commercial concepts and trends? This topic will be tackled through a series of panels by a host of top designers, stylists and photographers who shape the European and local scene.

This day is a unique opportunity for fashion experts and connoisseurs who ever wanted to enter the backstage of the fashion business!