DO(something)

📍 Ypsilanti, United States

A conference for those who (want to, need to, try to, can) do. Designers, artists, photographers, developers, creatives and entrepreneurs... Anyone who has ever had an idea that makes their pants tingle. It’s time to stop fucking around and do what you’ve always wanted to do.

STRP festival 2019

📍 Eindhoven, The Netherlands

STRP Biënnale is a ten-day festival, filled with spectacular art, technology and experimental electronic music. The festival is about sharing the passion for technology, with tours, workshops and an international conference where artists and technologists offer a glimpse behind the scenes.

Mirage Festival 2019

📍 Lion, France

The first event dedicated to digital cultures in Lyon, Mirage Festival has been investigating the links between artistic creation and technologies for more than seven years. In order to showcase the richness and diversity of this contemporary creation nourished by technologies, the festival offers a unique format built around three interrelated building blocks: an exhibition, a series of performances and a reflective lab, the Mirage Creative+. The 2019 theme is "Turmoil - Mankind and its future faced with the consequences of progress".

Forward Festival Vienna 2019

📍 Vienna, Austria

The Forward Festival stands for interesting talks and personal interaction with the most renowned minds from the fields of design, creativity and communication, who reveal their experiences, personal success and learnings to the audience. Next to presentations and talks, the extensive program consists of workshops, student talks, after show parties, live performances and happenings as well as the expo area. This program will once again be expanded for the 5th anniversary and will offer many specials and surprises for its visitors.

AIGA Design Conference 2019

📍 Pasadena, United States

The AIGA Design Conference brings the design community together to experience provocative speakers, local culture, nightly networking receptions, competitions, exhibitions, professional development sessions and face-to-face roundtables with your design heroes.

Playgrounds Blend Breda

📍 Breda, The Netherlands

A 2 day conference about concept art and design for films, animation and games. Playgrounds Blend, showcasing a catwalk of inspiring, progressive and innovative makers who are known for stretching outside of a genre and mashing more things up.

OFFSET Dublin

📍 Dublin, Ireland

10th edition of OFFSET. OFFSET is a 3 day creative conference on creativity and bringing together the best in International and Irish creative talent in graphic design, illustration, street and fine art, film, photography, moving image and much, much more.

Krupa. Interface Design Conference

📍 Kyiv , Ukraine

KRUPA is the biggest interface design conference in Eastern Europe. KRUPA is a gathering global design stars, UX leaders, aspiring designers and UX teams, developing networking opportunities and raising design industry in Ukraine to a new level. With speakers from Ukraine, USA, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, and Israel.

Visual Playground 2019

📍 Bucharest, Romania

VISUAL PLAYGROUND is an illustration and graphic design festival. Imagined by creatives for creatives, it stashes together 8 days of workshops, a two-day conference, two exhibitions and a mural painting, all while aiming to create a bridge between the local and international artistic communities.

Playgrounds Blend Amsterdam

📍 Amsterdam, The Netherlands

A single day conference about concept art and design for films, animation and games. Playgrounds Blend, showcasing a catwalk of inspiring, progressive and innovative makers who are known for stretching outside of a genre and mashing more things up.

-ing creative festival 2019

📍 Dubai, United Arab Emirates

-ing creative festival is about generating creativity and inspiration, gathering talents from all over the world to re-enforce the creative community. It is about inspiring, networking and generating. (and having fun in the process). -ing is a creative community based in Dubai. They unlock your creative potential through talks, workshops, and networking sessions.

Future Friends Speculative Design Event

📍 Maribor, Slovenia

The inaugural edition of The Future Friends Event will be a mix of educational events, workshops, a conference, and an open discussion, accompanied by networking events, including the Happy Future Friends Party, which will be open to anyone keen to exchange knowledge and experience with design professionals and the general public.

SmashingConf San Francisco 2019

📍 San Francisco, United States

5th edition of SmashingConf in San Francisco. SmashingConf San Francisco, we’ll explore how to improve accessibility and front-end workflow, refactoring, security, interface design patterns, CSS Grid techniques, performance, and how to write better JavaScript. Plus a bunch of hands-on workshops on design, front-end and UX.

Leeds Digital Festival

📍 Leeds, United Kingdom

The Leeds Digital Festival is a city-wide, open platform celebration of all things digital within Leeds.

Resonate 2019

📍 Belgrade, Serbia

The Belgrade New Media Festival celebrates its 8th anniversary in 2019. The festival brings together artists to drive a forward-looking debate on the position of technology in art and culture. Each year the festival lasts for six days and provides an overview of current situation in the fields of music, visual arts and digital culture. Guest artists, lecturers, and other participants are chosen to represent the cutting edge of the contemporary creative industry in the world.

FITC Toronto 2019

📍 Toronto, Canada

Immerse yourself in a land of #PureImagination at the 18th year of #FITCToronto It’s the Future of Innovation, Technology and Creativity. FITC Toronto is a globally recognized industry event showcasing the best the world has to offer in design, digital development, media and innovation in creative technologies – its three days and nights of presentations, parties, installations and performances that unite and transform the industry.

Uenoland

📍 New York, United States

Uenoland is about creativity and inspiration, the most valuable thing we as humans have. It’s about experimenting, evolving and to trying new things. It’s about the theory of everything: the theory that the more you learn about the world, better you become at everything.

What Design Can Do 2019

📍 Mexico City, Mexico

What Design Can Do is an international platform on the impact of design, founded by Dutch agency De Designpolitie. Themes for the What Design Can Do Mexico City edition are cities, activism, leadership, cultural identity, immigrants & food.

99U Conference 2019

📍 New York, United States

The 99U Conference is to shift the focus from idea generation to idea execution. Learn from the world’s top thinkers and doers in a series of main stage talks over two days. 99U speakers offer pragmatic, real-world insights that transcend creative sectors.This will be the 11th edition.

Related interview:

Neon Moiré Show with 99U Editor-in-Chief Matt McCue

Pictoplasma Conference & Festival Berlin

📍 Berlin, Germany

Annual Pictoplasma Festival turns for the 15th time Berlin into the world’s epicenter of character design and art—and a vibrant meeting point for a diverse scene of international artists, illustrators, filmmakers, and game, graphic or product designers. Creators and producers meet for a central conference to exchange strategies for figurative aesthetics, while the wider festival invites the general public to discover new trends. Cutting edge screenings bring the latest animation to the big cinema screen, numerous exhibitions throughout the city present original works and outstanding character craftsmanship, and performances put the characters into direct play with the audience.

beyond tellerrand // Dusseldorf 2019

📍 Düsseldorf, Germany

beyond tellerrand is a web- and design festival. With a workshops and talks for creative minds on: design, technology, inspiration plus room for networking.

Berlin Letters Festival

📍 Berlin, Germany

Berlin Letters! A festival for professionals and amateurs of lettering, sign painting, calligraphy and type design. Three days of inspiration, fun and skillshare with international speakers, awesome workshops and general jamboree.

Semi Permanent Sydney 2019

📍 Sydney, Australia

Three day conference Semi Permanent brings together internationally renowned designers, artists & creative icons for live events, presentations, workshops & parties. In 2019 Semi Permanent 2019 explores the 'TRUTH'.

Related interview: Murray Bell, founder and director Semi Permanent

Typomania 2019

📍 Moscow, Russia

Typomania is an annual type, typography, calligraphy and video event. The festival aims to collect and connect as many type fans as possible and turn them in to a professional community.

Fontstand International Typography Conference

📍 Porto, Portugal

On May 25, 2019, Fontstand is organize their second International Typography Conference. A day packed with presentations and discussions in Porto. Meet and learn from the world-class type designers and typographers from around the world, discussing the creation and use of type in the 21st century.

DesignThinkers Vancouver

📍 Vancouver, Canada

Over its 20 year history, the DesignThinkers Conference has spanned massive changes in the communication design industry. From print to digital, visual identity to brand, websites to user experiences, design has evolved as new trends, technologies and philosophies transform the wider world. DesignThinkers Vancouver explores the innovations and disruptions that inform, inspire and influence design, consider its impact and re-imagine its role as we confront fundamental global challenges.

UX London

📍 London, United Kingdom

UX London, now in it’s eleventh year, brings together the world’s leading design experts and practitioners for three days of inspirational talks and hands-on workshops. Clearleft, a Strategic Design Agency, based in sunny Brighton has curated the schedule so you will spend your mornings gaining unique insights from influential speakers from around the globe. In the afternoon you’ll get the chance to roll up your sleeves in the workshop of your choice, not to mention sampling fantastic street food and spending time with the UX community at our evening events. You’ll head home with new ideas, practical skills that you can apply straight away and brilliant connections with fellow UXers the world over.

Eyeo Festival 2019

📍 Minneapolis, United States

Since 2011, the annual Eyeo Festival brings together creative coders, data designers and creators working at the intersection of data, art & technology for talks, workshops, labs and events.

Kerning 2019

📍 Faenza, Italy

Kerning an annual conference dedicated to typography and web typography. With 2-day hands-on workshops and one conference day. Kerning is a non-profit event.

Sensorium

📍 Bratislava, Slovakia

The annual festival facilitates discussion at the conference, showcases ground-breaking performances & installations and provides education through workshops and labs. The conference invites national and international speakers from multidisciplinary fields to discuss new work, share common challenge and inspire new ideas.

CXI Brand Conference

📍 Bielefeld, Germany

The 11th edition of CXI Brand talks! CXI is a one-day brand and cor­po­rate iden­tity event organized by Bie­le­feld School of Design. During the sessions questions like. What de­fi­nes the ef­fec­tiven­ess of a corporate identity pro­ject? What ex­actly is nee­ded, from both cli­ent and agency? And how can such a com­plex pro­cess be im­ple­men­ted in a way that works? Will be addressed, next to showcasing re-design for big brands.

By Design Conference

📍 Bratislava, Slovakia

By Design Conference is a international conference for designers, entrepreneurs and creative minds. The one day event focus on design and business.

TypeParis 2019

📍 Paris, France

Type@Paris is a 5-week typeface design program, which started in 2015.

Over the course of the program, industry leaders will teach and mentor students in both traditional and modern craft techniques of typeface design.

Located in the center of Paris, students will be able to enjoy the culture of the city and will also receive access to historic materials at key libraries in the city. Renowned guest critics, will compliment the daily program with unique perspectives around typography and design.

Forward Festival Munich

📍 Munich, Germany

The Forward Festival stands for interesting talks and personal interaction with the most renowned minds from the fields of design, creativity and communication, who reveal their experiences, personal success and learnings to the audience. Next to presentations and talks, the extensive program consists of workshops, student talks, after show parties, live performances and happenings as well as the expo area. This program will once again be expanded for the 5th anniversary and will offer many specials and surprises for its visitors.

Hours Beirut

📍 Beirut, Lebanon

Hours Beirut is a three day exploration through talks, workshops, music and food on how maintenance and the act of maintaining can be understood in the context of new innovation and creativity.

CSS Day 2019 + UI Special

📍 Amsterdam, Netherlands

The seventh edition of this advanced CSS conference & UI Special. UI Special on Thursday, and a regular deep-diving CSS Day on Friday.

Typographics

📍 New York, United States

Typographics is a design festival for people who use type. 5th edition of this annual event devoted to contemp­orary typo­graphy, with talks, work­shops, and tours focusing on where typo­graphy is today and where its future may lie. It will be held at The Cooper Union in New York City.

Forward Festival Zurich

📍 Zurich, Switzerland

The Forward Festival stands for interesting talks and personal interaction with the most renowned minds from the fields of design, creativity and communication, who reveal their experiences, personal success and learnings to the audience. Next to presentations and talks, the extensive program consists of workshops, student talks, after show parties, live performances and happenings as well as the expo area. This program will once again be expanded for the 5th anniversary and will offer many specials and surprises for its visitors.

Design West Summer School

📍 Letterfrack, Ireland

Design West is an international summer design school located in the beautiful village of Letterfrack in Connemara, on the West Coast of Ireland. For two weeks this summer, participants got the opportunity to work with leading international designers from renowned studios across Europe.

SmashingConf Toronto 2019

📍 Toronto, Canada

Second edition of SmashingConf Toronto. At this event Smashing will explore the bright and dark sides of front-end and UX — responsive HTML email, naming conventions, security audits, GDPR and privacy, responsive art direction, front-end architecture, rendering performance, CSS Grid Layout, PWA, Vue.js, Webpack and how to set up bulletproof contracts. Plus a bunch of hands-on workshops on design, front-end and UX.

Pattern Day

📍 Brighton, United Kindom

A one-day event for web designers and developers on design systems, pattern libraries, style guides, and components.

Porto Design Summer School

📍 Porto, Portugal

The Porto Design Summer School, now in its 7th edition, is an intensive two week workshop led by renowned international graphic designers where participants can explore the creative possibilities of editorial design, by examining typographic systems, hierarchy and composition, narrative structure, navigation, cover design, editing and notions of authorship.

Forward Festival Hamburg

📍 Hamburg, Germany

The Forward Festival stands for interesting talks and personal interaction with the most renowned minds from the fields of design, creativity and communication, who reveal their experiences, personal success and learnings to the audience. Next to presentations and talks, the extensive program consists of workshops, student talks, after show parties, live performances and happenings as well as the expo area. This program will once again be expanded for the 5th anniversary and will offer many specials and surprises for its visitors.

OffGrid

📍 Osea Island, United Kingdom

OffGrid is a conference that brings together the interested and interesting. With walks, talks, ideas & workshops all on our own island for 48 hours.

Clarity 2019

📍 San Francisco, United States

Clarity is the first conference fully dedicated to design systems (which includes style guides, pattern libraries, CSS frameworks, and design operations). While the focus is on design systems, past sessions have also included related topics like accessibility, motion design, and performance.

Festa Del Grafisme

📍 Portbou, Spain

The 12th Festa del Grafisme and the 2nd edition of Tallers de la Festa at the end of summer. Tallers de la Festa is a gathering with some of the best professionals and professors from the national and international levels to inspire the participants during a week. The festival encourage experimentation and encourage participants (teachers, professionals and students) to investigate new workshop formats both in terms of content and work methodologies.

The conference

📍 Malmö, Sweden

Ninth edition of The Conference. A two-day exploration of complexity in our digital world. The curated sessions help you connect the dots between the widespread disciplines and topics such as culture, arts, human behavior, tech and science.

TypeCon2019

📍 Minneapolis, United States

Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA), an international organization dedicated to the promotion, study, and support of typography and related arts celebrates the 21th anniversary of TypeCon their annual conference, with exhibits, workshops, parties, and other extracurricular events are always part of the complete TypeCon package.

Front Conference Zurich

📍 Zurich, Switzerland

Frontend Conference Zurich. 3 days of inspiring workshops & talks where design meets technology.

Information Design Summer School

📍 Bath, United KIngdom

The Information Design Summer School happens every year in Bath, UK. It's an intense introduction to information design. There are lectures, discussions, and group-working on projects – we focus on users, diagramming, text design, testing and process. It's an inspiring week that attracts both graphic designers wanting to focus on communicating complex information, and people from other professions wanting some of what we've got: we get medics, lawyers, technical writers and more. Organised by the Simplification Centre in partnership with the International Institute for Information Design.

ATypI 2019

📍 Tokyo, Japan

ATypI Tokyo will bring together typeface designers, publishers, developers, and educators from Japan and the global typographic community. Tokyo is the perfect environment for a global gathering: it is a crucible of hypermodernity and tradition, globalism and regionalism. ATypI is a global network that spans design professions, company sizes, and geographic areas of activity.

SmashingConf Freiburg 2019

📍 Freiburg, Germany

The 8th edition of SmashingConf Freiburg in their lovely hometown. With one track, two days, 13 speakers and 260 attendees, expect actionable insights for your work — right at the footsteps of the magical Black Forest.

Me Convention

📍 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

The third edition of me Convention. The festival-like conference taps into the Zeitgeist of the near future, and will examine how innovation, inspiration, and creativity can help guide the direction we are traveling in. Me Convention is a collaboration between Mercedes-Benz and SXSW and focus on: New Creation, New Leadership, New Realities, New Urbanism and New Velocity.

Gather

📍 Stockholm, Sweden

Gather is not your average conference or music festival. It investigates society and its future, embraces complexity and bursts filter bubbles to offer inspiring and unexpected experiences for the curious minds. Gather hosts some of the most interesting speakers and artists active in the world today.

Dibi Conference

📍 Edinburgh, Scotland

DIBI : Design It; Build It is a international digital conferences for designers & developers for those shaping the future of the web. This editions the conference is celebrating risk taking, encourage participants to step out of their comfort zones and ask what we can learn when things do go wrong.

Graphic Matters

📍 Breda, Netherlands

Graphic Matters presents self-initiated projects by international designers who care about how they affect the world. With exhibitions, tours, talks, workshops, and events that speak to the curious individual (not just the design professional), we show the impact of design.

Us By Night

📍 Antwerp, Belgium

Fourth edition of Us By Night a design & creativity festival turned into a unique night experience. With an inspiring lineup and an endless market, it's guaranteed to provide you 3 nights you don't want to miss. Soon more names will be announced.

Papanek Symposium 2019

📍 Porto, Portugal

The Papanek Symposium 2019 debates both the future, and the future of design: The places, ideas and means by which the politics of design, and the design of politics come together. Part of Porto Design Week.

Playgrounds The Art Department 2019

📍 Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Character design, concept art, background visuals, character building, robotics, props: every single detail a crew has to think of and decide upon before they can get start actually making the film. For two days Playgrounds The Art Department will dive in the magic of visual storytelling. The world’s leading and inspirational artists and designers meet up in the Dutch capitol of design Eindhoven. With international artists and designers in a program of artist talks, workshops, demo’s, presentations, portfolio reviews, an expo with original artwork, a Sketch Lounge, VR Area, Paint-over Area & good food and drinks.

OFFF Vienna

📍 Vienna, Austria

Second edition of OFFF Vienna.

Nordic.Design

📍 Stockholm, Sweden

Nordic.design is a single track conference all about UX, UI, design tools, workflows and more with talks by internationally renowned speakers and rising stars in the design community. Nordic.design is happening the day before Nordic.js, the perfect combo if you are into design and programming!

SmashingConf New York 2019

📍 New York, United States

The 6th SmashingConf New York, just around the corner of Times Square. A friendly, inclusive event that focus on real-world problems and solutions. Our focus is on front-end and UX but we cover everything web, be it UI design or machine learning. With one track, two days, 13 speakers and 400 attendees, expect actionable insights for your work.

Brand New Conference 2019

📍 Las Vegas, United States

A two-day conference on corporate and brand identity with 16 sessions from today’s most active and influential practitioners around the world. Organized by UnderConsideration

POST Design Festival 2019

📍 Copenhagen, Denmark

The third installment of POST Design Festival. Its a design festival focusing on the working life of the visual communicator and the ethics of design. It deals with issues beyond the development of client contacts and stylistic approaches.

DesignThinkers Toronto 2019

📍 Toronto, Canada

DesignThinkers, Canada’s premier conference for visual communicators. This annual design conference provides insights into design thinking, design process and strategy, helping delegates strengthen their ability to deliver outstanding visual communications and cutting-edge design innovation. T

KIKK 2019

📍 Namur, Belgium

The 9th edition of KIKK, a multi-track festival on the intersection of art, science & tech to explore the economic and artistic implications of new technologies. The conference is on Thursday and Friday, all exhibitions are also open on Saturday and Sunday.The event gathers people of all backgrounds from all around the world. They are designers, scientists, makers, entrepreneurs, artists, architects, developers or musicians.

Adobe MAX 2019 - The Creativity Conference.

📍 Los Angeles, United States

The Adobe MAX is an annual event held by Adobe. Adobe MAX is an awe-inspiring experience unlike any other — your once-a-year opportunity to attend the premier event for designers, developers, and decision-makers. Connect with industry leaders, learn directly from the experts, preview new software, and hear success stories and best practices for creating rich experiences across multiple screens.

Integrated Conference

📍 Antwerp, Belgium

The seventh edition of the thought-provoking conference format organized by St Lucas School of Arts Antwerp. The biennial event offers a platform for the compelling dialogue between art, design and society, and digs deep in the polemics of this discourse. It is a forum where speakers, students and professionals can compare their work, design processes, sources of inspiration and methodologies.

Eastern Design Conference 2019

📍 Košice, Slovakia

Second edition of ​​Eastern Design Conference​. Design is a global language, yet the business that’s done here in the east stays local. Eastern Design Conference aims to explore this unordinary relationship.

Productized Conference

📍 Lisbon, Portugal

During 2 full days of workshops and talks in English, product-related professionals will be able to discuss their perspectives and share insights on how to build great products together with the leading minds in Product Thinking, Product Management, Product Design, and Product Experience. Productized Conference takes place in Lisbon, one of Europe's top tech hubs and a world-class tourism destination. With 500 attendees, it's considered to have the right size for a great networking experience. The lineup always includes big names of the product space.