Aftermath of Helsinki Design Week

The largest design festival in Nordics is Helsinki Design Week, and we were part of it with the virtual satellite event Superweek of textile and surface design. Let’s do the aftermath of Helsinki Design Week, and take a quick look at the Superweek afterwards!

The idea of the event came into our minds in June. Our aim was to increase the awareness for textile and surface design, as there are quite seldom any professionally interesting events organized for textile designers. At the same time, we kept in our minds to keep the program interesting even for the big audience. With the past experiences with Covid-19, we wanted to play safe and make the event virtual – just to avoid the potential last-minute travel or other restrictions that could affect the participation.

We received, once again, plenty of great applications for the portfolio review. In a day, we met 10 talents wishing to join the agency or to have advice for how to proceed with their creative careers. Thank you for sharing your portfolios and thoughts during the short meetings! You have received now also written feedback from us.

During Hottest designers of Scandinavian style, we heard curated Finland-based textile studios and design talents to pitch their most recent collections and services. There were both internationally recognized studios as well as young talents on air, to make a nice mix. At the end of the webinar, we ended up philosophizing about the particularities of Scandinavian style. You can see the entire video on our Youtube channel.

Next, at a discussion event “Working as a pattern designer” we heard how pattern designers have organized themselves for working, what kind of agreements they make with their customers and how they price the creative work. There is no right or wrong way to work as a pattern designer – that is what needs to be pointed out.

Last but not least we made a journey to India. In a masterclass, the audience representing both sourcing and design got a load of information regarding the Indian textile industry. The Q&A session was very well used, and no questions were left unanswered.

All in all, the week gathered about 80 textile and surface design professionals representing also sourcing side in the business. There were at least 10 different nationalities represented already during the first year! Thank you each and everyone for joining!

As per the feedback, the audience was very satisfied with the content provided, especially from the professional point of view. However, based on the feedback, we have things to improve, so please expect to have another, improved version of the Superweek of textile and surface design again next year! The concept will be the same: a discussion event, a masterclass, and a pitching event.

What is Scandinavian style in textile and surface design?

The Superweek of textile and surface design showed that the concept of Scandinavian style in the surface design seems to be a bit blur, especially among the participants outside of Scandinavia. We have asked some industry professionals to share their thoughts, but we want to send out an open invitation to textile and surface design professionals to write about their thoughts about this topic on our blog!

So please, drop us a line about your thoughts and the angle you wish to cover in your blog text – we will send you in return some technical details. All text on this topic will be tagged with Scandinavian style so that they can be easily filtered up in our blog.

Hope this helps in solving the mystery of Scandinavian style in textile and surface design.