Milan has Salone del Mobile; Copenhagen, 3daysofdesign; London, Clerkenwell Design Week… As for Sydney and Melbourne (and elsewhere in our region), it’s all about Saturday Indesign, the annual takeover of one of our cities’ design landscapes that brings together young professionals, specifiers and enthusiasts at the best product showrooms. Saturday Indesign – set to land in Melbourne this year following a successful Sydney showing in 2024 – has been a fixture in the design calendar since 2003, but where did the idea come from, what makes it unique, and how has it grown to become the event it is today?

Raj Nandan, CEO of Indesign Media, explains the original concept: “It was designed to grab the interest of anybody in the business of specifying products – the young professionals who actively needed relationships and to learn about products. Saturday Indesign is an extension of our brand, Indesign, and it puts the people specifying the products in the showrooms of the people who are bringing the products into the country, or designing and manufacturing them.”

In a word, then, it’s about relationships. Saturday Indesign facilitates the richest cross-pollination of ideas and connections that the design industry can offer in our region. Notably, it’s the same core idea as the original spark – taking the existing, sometimes disparate, parts of the wider design industry and making sure that they can come into fruitful contact with each other.

“The future too is about showing the industry what you need to do to be a great designer, and that’s really heavily based on relationships,” says Nandan. “It relies on knowledge and experiencing that knowledge first-hand with people who can teach you about it.”

“It’s bit like the antithesis of the digital world. I still learn something every time I speak with someone – Saturday Indesign has embedded itself in a unique position that allows people to go there, be nurtured, network and really learn about the culture of the companies that bring these products in.”

Back in the early 2000s, it was actually an event in New York that provided something of a precedent for what Saturday Indesign would become. ‘Designer’s Saturday’ crafted a single-city celebration of design that centred on bringing designers into contact with showrooms and products. After a stuttering start in Australia, the concept was brought to life through Indesign in 2003.

Check out the new Saturday Indesign website here

The bedrock of Saturday Indesign is in the relationships it has always sparked among designers as specifiers, showrooms and design enthusiasts in general. Nandan describes how the event has expanded and contracted over time, including occasions where it went to Brisbane, Singapore and Hong Kong. Today, he says, it’s found its natural scale – a maximum of 30 showrooms seems to be the right fit for fostering connections across one city. 

“We use priority as the key driving factor – the event is all about giving people a chance to say something relevant to the industry. When people come to Saturday Indesign, they know that they’re going to get the latest conversation, the latest products, architects and designers who are working on relevant projects with current problems, international designers who are here showing trends from overseas – there are so many chances to hear about the important things going on across our community,” adds Nandan. 

Of course, more than two decades of Saturday Indesign conjure up countless stories of connection. Some even stray into territory more romantic than professional, with anecdotes of star-crossed lovers – unnamed – who found each other at one of the event’s activations, including the renowned afterparty!

On a more prosaic level, it’s impossible to quantify the number of productive connections among designers, specifiers, product manufacturers and showroom managers that Saturday Indesign has facilitated over the years. “Using our connections as media, it was pretty natural for us to come up with a smarter, faster way to take the investment that companies had in showrooms and bring designers into them so they could actively learn about the culture of a company,” says Nandan.

As the 2025 edition shapes up for 6^th September in Melbourne, Saturday Indesign reminds us of the breadth of the design industry – and the importance of bringing all of its component parts into regular contact with each other. It’s all about driving the connections and crossovers that might just spark a new design relationship and, more than 20 years since its inception, Saturday Indesign is proud of its history in facilitating exactly that.

Save the date – Saturday 6th September!

Saturday Indesign
saturdayindesign.com

Read about Saturday Indesign’s 2024 design discussion panels here