International Design Conference 2023: Design-led Renaissance

Commemorating Design Consciousness Week, the Philippine Creative Industries Month, and our own fiftieth anniversary, the Design Center of the Philippines held our seventh annual International Design Conference (IDC) from September 14 to 15, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines' Black Box Theater.

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Since its inception in 2017, our IDC has gathered global trailblazers and emerging talents from the creative and business sectors, alongside local design luminaries, in an immersive thought-leadership conference. Together, these experts examine how design and creativity can effectively address wicked challenges, introduce the audience to new frontiers of knowledge and possibility, and, ideally, transform the way Filipinos do business.

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2023's theme was 'Design-Led Renaissance', embracing the ongoing shift in which more and more countries - including the Philippines - are coming to harness the immense power of design to champion positive change, drive innovation, and achieve holistic development across economic, social, cultural, and environmental realms.

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Highlights included the launch of our pioneering Making Design Count report and Policy Brief publication; our first Philippine Design Policy Lab workshop; design exchanges on Design Sustainability Efforts Between BMW and Benilde Industrial Design, as well as Exploring Collaborative Support for Design and Creative Policies Between Denmark and the Philippines; and the Design Ecosystem Mixer, where our guests got to mingle more informally, while still forming promising design connections and interactions.

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Altogether, we managed to surpass our goals for the event, as follows:

• 98% client satisfaction rating;

• almost double our target number of design promotion activities;

• 2,365 participants engaged, onsite and online;

• over PHP96 million worth of earned media mileage;

• 42 speakers featured from the UK, Germany, Singapore, Denmark, and the Philippines; and

• connections facilitated among 4 global design leaders and organizations, 11 government offices, 4 national associations, business support organizations, educational institutions, international councils, embassies, and a private company.