Instructor Sara Božanić with Media Production students at Vienna Design Week 2024

Sara Božanić, graphic design instructor at VSŠ Academia, visited the “VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2024: Design as an attitude” with Media Production students.

Vienna Design Week is a renowned design platform, a curated festival with more than 200 events, hosting more than 40,000 visitors every year. Each year, VDW highlights new and emerging design disciplines and approaches. This year, the focus was on the theme of distributed design.

Distributed design is a collaborative approach in which several makers from different disciplines work together to facilitate the design process (from idea to finished object/product/service). It emphasises the importance of “evenly distributing design” as opposed to centralised or decentralised approaches.

Distributed design moves away from the aesthetic as it addresses broader issues such as sustainability and community involvement. It encourages innovation among emerging creatives by harnessing technology to facilitate this process.

The main pillars of the distributed design approach:

• Distributed knowledge: This approach improves problem-solving skills and promotes learning by doing. It ensures that knowledge is equitably disseminated and integrated in different settings.
• Tequid learning: By fostering an environment that encourages continuous learning of new approaches and attitudes, we can better prepare ourselves for new challenges and opportunities.
• Collective approach or attitude: An action-oriented approach that emphasises cooperation and collaboration between individuals to achieve common goals or address societal issues, with teamwork and shared expertise at the core.

Distributed planning is a powerful concept that emphasises the importance of collective intelligence and collaboration.