Messe Frankfurt and Stylepark are pleased to invite you to the third issue of The Design Annual, which will take place in the Festhalle Frankfurt am Main between July 4th and 7th, 2008. With over 10,000 visitors, the event was a great success in June 2007 and we expect nothing less next year. Taking 'showtime' as the theme, we intend to highlight another crucial aspect of design and discuss it with you. The theme addresses both the design process and marketing and plays a role in both the presentation of a finished product just as in its use: It is about displaying, showing and staging design and its protagonists. As such, the emotional shows given by major companies and spectacular presentations of products and designers are mostly a result of marketing-effective tools which, whether deliberately or not, permanently question the relationship between content and show and between meaning and image.
For The Design Annual 2008 we have consciously chosen a very exciting theme which will generate controversial discussion. Once again, the event theme will be reflected in the spatial program. The two artists Tobias Rehberger and Claus Richter are responsible for the spatial concept. Together they will develop a diverse and multi-functional environment in the Festhalle. Here tension will be build, here sensational things will take place, here the unpredictable will happen.Are you ready for showtime?
