By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Design West Michigan—born of the WIRED InnovationWorks initiative—plans to bring together designers from all disciplines to network and learn about the initiative to brand West Michigan as a design-centric region in order to market design as an industry and a vital economic building block for the area. Haworth’s new award-winning headquarters is the venue for the free evening event on June 23, which will include a launch of the new Design West Michigan web site geared to providing case studies of business problems solved by innovative design.
“There isn’t any organization or activity in the nation that I know of that has worked to collectively bring the different design disciplines together,” says John Berry, chair of Design West Michigan. “I asked this of Paul Thompson of Cooper-Hewitt, the design arm of the Smithsonian and he doesn’t know of any initiative like this.”
The event will bring together architectural designers, interior designers, industrial designers, interactive media (digital designers), fashion designers, landscape architecture, and packaging designers in an attempt to identify how many designers and what disciplines are in the region. Another goal is to get designers talking with one another about design as an industry and how to promote it.
“Design is very much about problem solving and to help businesses and entrepreneurs be successful,” Berry says.
The event is June 23 from 5:30 to 8:00, and attendees will get a tour of Haworth’s groundbreaking headquarters and showroom.
Source: John Berry, Design West Michigan
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Deborah Johnson Wood is the development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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