It feels like it was only yesterday that Design Indaba 2013 took place and already the organisers are storming ahead with plans for the 2014 event!

Cape Town: We are looking forward to this year’s line up at the Design Indaba Conference that runs over three days from 27 February to March 01 2013. ARTS THREAD brings you some speaker highlights.

Under the theme of Everyday have a Smile, Osaka University of Arts presented two displays, one from the Product Design department on learning through play and one from the Graphic Design department on packaging that communicates affection through the senses. Our reporter at Tokyo Desigmers Week, Yoshie Kawahara brings us the photos.

Nik Mahon, Senior Lecturer in Advertising at Southampton Solent University is the author of the recent AVA Basics publication Ideation that explains the process of generating creative ideas. A must for all advertising students packed with interesting case studies from all around the world, plus most importantly – practical exercises to complete along the way.

The Advertising department of Les Arts Décoratifs dedicates its key showspace this winter to the Austrian graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister.

Throughout the illustration section of New Designers this year we have found an array of outstanding technique and talent.

The Visual Communication department stood out with amazing and very inspiring project ideas. We were pleased to see how projects were the result of combining multiple aspects of digital design. The vast majority of the digital animation projects showed a clear understanding of the current issues and the amount of research and initial development was outstanding.

Forty creative talents were invited to take part in the recent Design Indaba Expo as part of the festival’s initiative to identify and promote new designers in sectors including architecture, advertising, applied art, film, fashion, graphic design, interior design, jewellery, new media, publishing, product design and visual art.

The opportunity to show is given to both designers who have just started their own business and also to higher education creative students. The three-day event included a good selection of graphic design talents. See later this week for fashion, accessories and jewellery.

La Publicité au secours des grandes causes – Advertising coming to the help of worthy causes – at Paris’s Les Arts Décoratifs shows a major collection of posters and films made for French NGOs and institutions to get across their messages.

The 300 posters and films in this exhibition show how how advertising has helped raise and shape public awareness, from the late 60s through to today. The exhibition covers six major themes: human rights, humanitarian aid, ecology, health, social exclusion and social aid, education and civic awareness.