Quarter 01 / 2004

Greetings from Cape Town.

'Tis the season to celebrate design as we host the 7th International Design Indaba conference and the inaugural Design Indaba Expo - our first public platform at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from 26-29 February. It also represents a few days to D-Day, South Africa's first national Design Day, hereinafter always on the last Friday of February.

We welcome our international speakers and delegates to Cape Town and know that the Mother City will be most hospitable - long balmy days, with no rain (it has not rained in the last week of February ever since our first Design Indaba in 1995!) and we can also guarantee that the Southeaster will be completely spent!

We have been boosters for South African design for the last decade. And over that term we have seen an amazing progression in the standard and quality of design - but more importantly a new found confidence and a sense of pride in the home-grown. What D-Day reflects is the national sense of maturity in knowing who we are and from whence we've come - and a collective sense of it's cool to be South African. It's become terminally glam to step out, resplendent in the creations of our peers in fashion. And for the foreign readership, I assure you this is a new phenomenon - a few years ago we were even rooting for the foreign teams playing against the Springboks! Our ten years of democracy has helped knit together the amazing technicolour dreamcoat that is contemporary South Africa.

And so it's fitting that we launch the Expo - with its 100% South African design representation - in our 10th anniversary of freedom. Come and support your peers across the creative industries - graphic design, advertising, fashion, publishing, visual arts, photography, film, new media, craft, product design, architecture, interior design and more. The full event guide, incorporating the conference, and the Expo directory is to be found at the back of this issue.

Let's create a better future, by design. - Ravi Naidoo