fluid – regional awards for young designers

FLUID Design Forum and NGO FLUX International Contest for Young Designers

• THEME: SUSTAINABLE OPTIMISM.
• CATEGORY: Poster
• Each participant or group can submit a maximum of three posters: either three separate posters or one series of three posters.

This year’s edition of the FLUID Design Forum explores how optimism in design can help in responding to the complex issues of contemporary society, in which ways it can contribute to solutions but also how it can harm the efforts to address pertinent societal issues.

Design theory and practice are not exempt either. They became impotent through a compromise with capital. The market spectacle took the most brilliant ideas, appropriated and commodified them. Likewise, design theory and practice accepted compromises and took comfort in the understanding that they were inevitable.

If contemporary design does not lack optimism, is that design fake, is it cynical? Is it a consequence of choosing not to look at the broader context, or is it simply the result of a lack of information, myopia, or inexperience? If none of those things exist, what are the possible foundations for design optimism?

What makes it sustainable: realistic, authentic, selfless, and sensible? What can give vitality to design today while preserving higher goals? Can optimism be the very object of design thought and practice? Could design be more than just a means to an end?