Italian Design Day 2020
Italian Design Day (IDD) is an annual theme-based celebration which was launched in 2017 by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in collaboration and with the support of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism.
IDD offers an extensive program of promotional events created by the network of Embassies, Consulates, Italian Cultural Institutes and Italian Trade Agency (ITA) Offices abroad and has established itself over the years as an effective instrument in supporting the promotion of design and the internationalization of a strategic industrial sector for Italian exports. Every year, to mark the occasion, 100 different testimonials become the narrators of Italian design and creativity throughout the rest of the world.
The theme of the 2020 Italian Design Day was “Designing the future. Development, innovation, sustainability and beauty” and it was closely linked to the proactive capacity of Italian design and the extended ‘Made in Italy’ system to think up ever newer development scenarios, capable of overcoming self-referential rhetoric and keeping the improvement of our lives and the protection of the planet at the center of its objective. This was an even more poignant issue when considered within the context of the pandemic that we are currently experiencing.
Webinar on Italian Design Day in the USA
Explaining the value of design is increasingly fundamental to create social, environmental but also economic sustainability. Sharing values and contents, an extended participation to an increasingly curious and attentive public, an open debate on contemporary issues, all of these are becoming increasingly important when it comes to the success of design communication.
On November 5th, 2020, a webinar organized by the Italian Trade Agency (ITA) in New York together with the other ITA offices in the USA, as part of Italian Design Day 2020, took place. Although the event took place in conditions that were not optimal for an attentive audience (one day before the presidential elections and in the middle of the morning of a working day), 229 people participated, following all of the presentations from start to finish, for almost two hours of broadcasting.
The reason for such a success is due to the mix of voices, in the selection of participants coming from a variety of design-related areas. There were Piero Lissoni, Italian “Design Ambassador” for New York, Gaetano Pesce, maestro in design, Francesca Lanzavecchia, Creative Director & Co-Founder of Lanzavecchia + Wai, architect Marco Piva of Studio Marco Piva, Patrizio Cionfoli, Director of Design & Interaction of Studio Volpi, Yorgo Lykouria, Founder/Creative Director of Rainlight Studio. Yet key names are not enough to guarantee good attendance (especially online) unless they are coupled with contents that truly touch the audience's interest. The webinar managed to do so thanks to a curated showcase, ranging from case studies to an open discussion on strategies for Italian design production and its future.
The discussion provided some food for thought about solutions to avoid that physical distancing become social separation and to foster collective and participatory thinking on the great issues of contemporary life: development, innovation, sustainability and beauty, not only in the sense of aesthetics but also as the right of everyone to dignity in everyday life.
And, not surprisingly, it is these four key words that guided the creation of the Italian Design Day 2020 in the USA.
Italian Design Day 2020 - ‘Food for Future’ video
Food and design: what do they have in common?
Is it possible to redesign the course of our path on the planet?
How do hardships reinvent humankind?
On November 22nd, 2020 the video, “Signs for Food Future: Design as Nourishment for a Better Future" by Gianni Veneziano and Luciana Di Virgilio, produced in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago, the Consulate General of Italy in Chicago, and the students of Illinois Institute of Technology and the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, was released on the occasion of the 4th edition of Italian Design Day.
Gianni Veneziano and Luciana Di Virgilio (Veneziano+Team design studio), Design Ambassadors addressed the questions in the video. By aiming at sustainability, saving the planet, re-designing, and re-creating our future, designers start from the essence of life: food, in the sense of nourishment for us and our planet, re-invented in new forms of lightness, beauty, practicality, essence, future.
Event website https://www.italiandesignday.it/
ITA video event website https://bit.ly/3oERNl3
“Food Future” video https://bit.ly/3bzQ50G
Italian Design Day Official Youtube channel
