Abierto Mexicano de Diseño
October 21–25 in Mexico City
By Rodolfo Kusulas
Creative at VBAT
Mexico City is a dynamic and dazzling melting pot capital with more than 20 million people. It is a growing hub for creativity, fashion and design and home to our second VBAT office. Over the last decade, Mexico like many other countries in Latin America has discovered and fulfilled a new demand for design; the industry started to evolve from a manufacturer of goods to a design market, creating the need to develop and celebrate an identity as consumers and makers.
Today Mexican companies not only are increasingly aware of the importance of design but the need of it as a key for success.
In recent years, as local artists and designers have become popular and known, more and more events have drawn the spotlight to Mexican design. As a result attention and awareness have been raised in the common people. Unfortunately, this also has created a privileged sphere of designers that benefit of that attention, which results in a much harder field for young emerging designers.
This flaw in the Mexican design scene was spotted by some of the more experienced designers asking themselves:
“How will design in Mexico evolve if we don’t have an accessible field for young creatives to develop?”
They saw the need to make design accessible, not exclusive and elitist. Let’s just make it open for everyone. So inspired by these thoughts of openness, in the fall of 2013 they organized the first Abierto Mexicano de Diseño (Mexican Design Open); an international design festival focused on celebrating all design related disciplines and bringing them closer to society.
The creative disciplines covered in the festival are: graphic and communication, architecture, fashion, product design and more; including cultural and commercial exhibitions, lectures, showrooms, conferences, workshops, performances, parties, tours, and diverse events in Mexico City centre, an area very accessible for anyone and conveniently reachable from any point of the city.
This platform is an open call out for designers, companies, organizations, embassies, and universities to join forces to present recent creations and productions of all creative fields in a festive and collaborative scheme.
The first edition in 2013 was focused on trades, the makers and their activities; the second edition’s theme was processes, exploring all the creative activities involved in design projects; and this year’s theme is ‘Solutions’, the answers that design can give, being a proposal itself of how to connect design with society and make a design platform for all.
This year, the AMD wants to open even more to the world and have British design as the main guest. Also AMD made connections with many other countries and cities such as London, Dubai, Beirut, Puerto Rico, New York, Madrid and San Jose. It will host creatives from Japan, Chile, Brazil, Spain and Germany.
The 3rd edition of the Mexican Design Open (AMD) will take place in more than 30 collective locations within Mexico City Center from October 21st to the 25th of 2015.
Last year about 700 creatives were involved in about 200 events, gathering more than 70,000 attendees. Stay tuned to learn the final list of presenters, lecturers, companies and events as they will be constantly added in the coming weeks.
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By Rodolfo Kusulas
Creative at VBAT
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