Aside from drawing professionals, Design Indaba has become a veritable student Mecca, attracting graduates and learners from around the world. While top design graduates will again be presenting at the Design Indaba Conference, two independent delegations are honing in on destination Design Indaba to initiate development projects, while South Africa’s own Emerging Creatives are set to yet again astound at the Design Indaba Expo.

Initiated last year for the first time, the top graduates Pecha Kucha session at the Design Indaba Conference was home to some of the most radical and thought-provoking presentations of the event. This year, Sonja Bäumel from Design Academy Eindhoven will be exploring the crossovers in fashion and biology, Michael Edwards from the Parsons New School for Design will unpack the social benefits to be found in gaming, and Boback Firoozbakht from Rhode Island School of Design will share his research into sustainable architecture and cities. Tomas Kral from ECAL in Lausanne will show how poetry and humour combine to make unique designs, while Royal College of Art graduate Thomas Thwaites will tell of his journey on how to create a toaster from scratch yourself, going right back to mining. And South African Oliver Hermanus, graduate of the London Film School, will show just why his debut feature film Shirley Adams has garnered such international acclaim.

At the Design Indaba Expo, over 40 of South Africa’s hottest young designers, students and graduates will be showcasing their work in the Emerging Creatives pavilion. Supported by the Design Indaba Trust, this section of the expo has a reputation for showing just how cutting-edge the future of South African design promises to be. Many of South Africa’s most established contemporary designers first launched here, including Andile Dyalvane, John Bauer, Sandya Lalloo and Lyall Sprong. Just last year, Liv were given a life-changing opportunity to become Twiice International’s first South African furniture designers, while photographer Chris Saunders was spotted by Fabrica, receiving a six-month residency in Italy. Lynda Relph-Knight, editor of Design Week (UK), described the 2009 Emerging Creatives as: “A taster for a future that looks assured.” 

Bringing international acumen into the South African market, world-renowned designer and Royal College of Arts (London) associate professor, Jurgen Bey will be leading a delegation of 10 students to visit the Design Indaba Expo 2010. As part of their product design course, each of the students will be seeking to collaborate with one of the Design Indaba Expo exhibitors to design, develop and produce a new product. Working from the theme of "form follows fiction" and engaging with the topic of "manufactured landscapes", the collaboration will be about more than simply the final "thing". The eventual outcomes of the project will form part of a new Design Indaba range, which will go on to launch at the Milan Furniture Fair. 

From Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, a second delegation of international students will also be visiting Design Indaba on a developmental field trip. Intrigued by Design Indaba’s 10x10 Low-Cost Housing project, industrial design associate professor Thomas Garvey and three of his students have been investigating solutions to low-cost furniture development for a couple of months now, with the electronic assistance of Design Indaba. The student delegation will be coming to Design Indaba and visiting the 10x10 Housing community in Freedom Park. By engaging with the environment and through workshops with residents, the students hope to develop a range of furniture that is affordable, multi-purpose and space-saving, meeting the resident’s needs in creative, innovative ways.