Does it also seem to you that only a short time ago we were hav­ing drinks togeth­er at the sum­mer par­ty and now Christ­mas is just around the cor­ner? This is a good moment for us to reflect on 2024 because the past 12 months have been full of excit­ing events, an out­stand­ing edi­tion of mcbw, and numer­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties to share ideas and net­work. Design in all its facets always has been at the cen­ter: from sus­tain­abil­i­ty to brands, from aes­thet­ics to busi­ness strate­gies, from inno­va­tions to social respon­si­bil­i­ty. We also are aware that a lot of it would not have been pos­si­ble with­out our incred­i­ble com­mu­ni­ty, our part­ners, and you, so a heart­felt thank you from all of us! Hap­py hol­i­days! Here’s to a suc­cess­ful 2025!

prod­ucts, ser­vices, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and mar­ket­ing? Find­ing answers to these ques­tions is what we do. To remain up to date, we have redesigned our Entre­pre­neurs’ Forum for­mat so the name and look are new, but the objec­tive remains unchanged: Our busi­ness pan­els are forums for entre­pre­neurs, CEOs, exec­u­tives, and design pro­fes­sion­als which we orga­nize in coop­er­a­tion with the Cham­bers of Indus­try and Com­merce. Joint­ly with busi­ness, sci­ence, and research experts we address acute chal­lenges for cor­po­rate man­age­ment and show new paths design can pave.

What that means in prac­tice became clear to par­tic­i­pants of the fit for future busi­ness pan­el we host­ed with the Cham­ber of Indus­try and Com­merce for Swabia. In his keynote speech, Prof. Jan-Erik Baars gave an account of the best prac­tices of suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies such as Apple and Patag­o­nia, which stand out because they have iden­ti­fied design as an essen­tial ele­ment of their strate­gic ori­en­ta­tion. Suc­cess­ful design work is not done at Sil­i­con Val­ley alone; we find it around the cor­ner as well: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of mar­ket lead­ers Wag­n­er Liv­ing and schlaf gut shared prac­ti­cal insights from their com­pa­nies on the podi­um. The pan­el con­clud­ed with the mes­sage that design is not a cos­met­ic cor­rec­tor for prod­ucts and ser­vices but rather a cor­po­rate mind­set that pays off. It may require patience and com­pro­mise in some areas, but it is worth it. Rain­er Maria Wag­n­er agreed: “Design is an invest­ment in your company’s future.” He employs close to 450 peo­ple at his com­pa­ny, Wag­n­er Liv­ing, a lead­ing provider of office furniture.

Every year when we host mcbw, the city of Munich is top­sy-turvy for 10 days. The mot­to of the 13^th edi­tion this year was How to co-cre­ate with nature. Because we take the mat­ter of liv­ing with nature seri­ous­ly, we asked how nat­ur­al process­es can teach us to devel­op more effi­cient and effec­tive meth­ods. As part of our design sum­mit, the heart of every mcbw, we pre­pared a char­ter con­sist­ing of sev­en propo­si­tions that out­line how han­dling our plan­et respon­si­bly is pos­si­ble. Our fan­tas­tic speak­ers on stage – Lau­ra Kiesewet­ter, Mau­r­izio Mon­talti, Daniela Bohlinger, Tom Kort­beek, and Ital­ian archi­tect Ste­fano Boeri, this year’s Cre­ative Explor­er – point­ed out pow­er­ful new paths from their per­spec­tives. A sim­i­lar pic­ture was paint­ed at our Brands in the sus­tain­able trans­for­ma­tion busi­ness pan­el, which we con­duct­ed dur­ing mcbw in coop­er­a­tion with the Cham­ber of Indus­try and Com­merce for Munich. It became evi­dent that com­pa­nies are com­pelled to take a clear posi­tion on sus­tain­abil­i­ty now to build their brands accord­ing­ly. What is our take-away from mcbw 2024? From our sum­mit and the events host­ed by our part­ners we have learned that there are not only great the­o­ret­i­cal approach­es but also projects under­way that show us how to come clos­er to co-cre­at­ing with nature. What is impor­tant is to keep our eyes on the ball and not get dis­cour­aged even if process­es are tedious because there always is rea­son to hope.

Bet­ter pack­ag­ing can make com­pa­nies more sus­tain­able! Pack­ag­ing design has been close to our hearts for many years now. At sev­er­al events in 2024, we addressed the ques­tion of what makes good pack­ag­ing design. Aes­thet­ics, inno­va­tion, brand, sus­tain­abil­i­ty – when it comes to good pack­ag­ing, the require­ments are man­i­fold. How­ev­er, no pro­duc­er must walk the path alone: Design­ers bring to the table the exper­tise need­ed to cre­ate effec­tive pack­ag­ing. At our Out­side the box spe­cial show held dur­ing the Fach­pack trade fair, we pre­sent­ed a selec­tion of out­stand­ing works, includ­ing mul­ti-use piz­za box­es, reusable cos­met­ics bot­tles, and appeal­ing pack­ag­ing made 100% from dis­card­ed paper. We also engaged in the top­ic at the BrauBe­viale trade fair for the bev­er­age indus­try. A Design­walk lead­ing to select­ed exhibitors includ­ing O‑I Glass and Kro­nes allowed vis­i­tors a glimpse into the devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion process­es at these glob­al play­ers. We are con­vinced that design makes the dif­fer­ence in this indus­try as well: A well-thought-out design of glass bot­tles can help low­er ener­gy costs and assist with bring­ing prod­ucts and brands togeth­er in a more mean­ing­ful way to con­vince tar­get groups. More on the top­ic was dis­cussed at our Forum BrauBe­viale, where the speak­ers, all of them design­ers, shared insights into their dai­ly work. Bet­ti­na Schulz iden­ti­fied the lat­est devel­op­ments and trends in the pack­ag­ing mar­ket in a bay­ern design Research Text; click here to read it.

In Octo­ber we host­ed the sec­ond edi­tion of Social Design Days in Nurem­berg, a mul­ti-day event to advance new ideas for solv­ing soci­etal chal­lenges through design. The goal is to cre­ate solu­tions togeth­er that ben­e­fit all of soci­ety and fos­ter social par­tic­i­pa­tion. The theme of the 2024 edi­tion of Social Design Days was bet­ter togeth­er, a means to strength­en cohe­sion with­in soci­ety. To this end, we went all out with mul­ti­ple events: Design Jam, two inter­ac­tive, hands-on work­shops, and a large sym­po­sium as the high­light. We had two pan­els and a dozen speak­ers with numer­ous per­spec­tives from the fields of soci­ol­o­gy, start-up con­sul­tan­cy, econ­o­my, archi­tec­ture, and design.

“To strength­en democ­ra­cy is to prac­tice democ­ra­cy. And that requires process­es. Well-designed process­es. Process­es that are not trimmed for effi­cien­cy and opti­mal results.”

The dis­cov­ery of the day was unam­bigu­ous: Com­mu­ni­ties work espe­cial­ly well when every­one is allowed to expe­ri­ence self-effi­ca­cy. What does that mean? From psy­chol­o­gy we know that peo­ple draw a lot of sat­is­fac­tion from know­ing their actions have a direct impact on the present, for exam­ple, when cre­at­ing some­thing with their hands and see­ing their skills val­i­dat­ed. The stronger this expe­ri­ence, the bet­ter our rela­tion­ship with demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es and the more pro­nounced our will­ing­ness to engage in con­struc­tive dis­course. Facil­i­tat­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in democ­ra­cy, for exam­ple, with social design meth­ods, means strength­en­ing democ­ra­cy. For soci­ol­o­gist Jörg Som­mer, it is com­pa­ra­ble to sports: You need to train reg­u­lar­ly to become fit for a com­pe­ti­tion. He says that if many peo­ple have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to train democ­ra­cy, it becomes strong. Sommer’s pas­sion­ate plea for a strong democ­ra­cy can be read here.

Our per­spec­tives by design for­mat was devel­oped to offer new views on design. Joint­ly with speak­ers from diverse dis­ci­plines, we explore fields rel­e­vant to design from inter­dis­ci­pli­nary per­spec­tives. For exam­ple, our beau­ty nev­er dies talk host­ed in coop­er­a­tion with Mar­ket­ing­club Nürn­berg focused on aes­thet­ics, a key term in design, fine arts, and psy­chol­o­gy. It was clar­i­fied that aes­thet­ics is good for busi­ness, and always is cou­pled with indi­vid­ual and social pat­terns. There­fore, what we deem to be aes­thet­ic depends on our per­son­al expe­ri­ence and our social upbring­ing. Aes­thet­ics is essen­tial to design: In most cas­es, apply­ing the form fol­lows func­tion for­mu­la with­out includ­ing aes­thet­ics as a draft­ing fac­tor is not enough because emo­tion­al con­nec­tions between design and con­sumers are cre­at­ed through aes­thet­ics. This means, all good design goes beyond mere­ly ful­fill­ing a pur­pose; its aes­thet­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics can attract interest.

In Regens­burg, we host­ed piz­za for plan­et to fos­ter cir­cu­lar design, more specif­i­cal­ly, cir­cu­lar design in con­nec­tion with our diet. There are many ways to design a cycle: using a sus­tain­able prod­uct or facil­i­tat­ing new behav­iors, to name only two. Edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams for chil­dren and youths are one pos­si­bil­i­ty, for exam­ple, those orga­nized by the Hans Sauer Stiftung as part of the Cir­cu­lar Wes­t­end project; anoth­er option is reusable pack­ag­ing for piz­za and oth­er food, yet anoth­er is cook­books with recipes that focus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The mes­sage of the soirée: If you have a good idea, start by mak­ing something.

For some time now, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) has been mak­ing a noise in the world as a new design option. This is rea­son enough for us to take a clos­er look at the role AI plays in draft­ing process­es. At our the good, the bad, the AI event that took place dur­ing the Dig­i­tal Fes­ti­val in Nurem­berg we asked about the future of cre­ativ­i­ty in times of AI from the per­spec­tives of both design and media ethics. While we have no unequiv­o­cal answers yet, we know that appli­ca­tions in prac­tice are promis­ing, and new oppor­tu­ni­ties still are far from being exhausted.

Tick­ets for our events on Typog­ra­phy in Spaces were sold out as well. In addi­tion to a tour through Nuremberg’s his­toric cen­ter we orga­nized a keynote address by renowned graph­ic design­er and typog­ra­ph­er Lars Harm­sen. Our take-away? With­out typog­ra­phy in spaces there would be no local iden­ti­ties, brands, or ori­en­ta­tion. Typog­ra­phy is not a nerdy indus­try-spe­cif­ic top­ic but an eclec­tic medi­um that can make for excit­ing expe­ri­ences, regard­less of whether we use it for brand­ing, cul­ture, or guid­ing sys­tems.

Insights and net­work­ing are at the heart of our open house events. The con­cept is sim­ple: Mem­bers of the asso­ci­a­tion sup­port­ing bay­ern design invite oth­er mem­bers to their busi­ness premis­es and ini­ti­ate con­ver­sa­tions about their work, a for­mat that is well-received all around. Dur­ing our vis­its to steel­case, stil­bezirk, and BMW Group Design this year we learned about dif­fer­ent con­cepts of design in prac­tice, and made new con­tacts. Although these three com­pa­nies are dif­fer­ent, they share the same pos­i­tive and inspir­ing atti­tude towards design. Want to join? Become a mem­ber and enjoy exclu­sive benefits.

The New Euro­pean Bauhaus (NEB) is an ini­tia­tive devel­oped by the EU Com­mis­sion to fos­ter sus­tain­able solu­tions for a world worth liv­ing in. We at bay­ern design obvi­ous­ly are hap­py to con­tribute. As an NEB part­ner we launched the Liv­ing Lab: Ener­gy joint­ly with Bay­ern Inno­v­a­tiv. Togeth­er with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the cre­ative sec­tor, this pan­el of experts across dis­ci­plines devised pro­pos­als for mak­ing the tran­si­tion from fos­sil fuel and nuclear ener­gy more aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing and thus increas­ing accep­tance by soci­ety of sus­tain­able pow­er gen­er­a­tion. We believe that the cross-sec­tor team­work of design, the cor­po­rate world, and sci­ence has par­tic­u­lar­ly great poten­tial to over­come future chal­lenges, and we will con­tin­ue to cham­pi­on this open approach next year.

Dear Read­ers, whether you are a mem­ber, a part­ner, a speak­er at or vis­i­tor to our events, we would like to thank all of you for spec­tac­u­lar exchanges. It has been great fun! We wish you hap­py hol­i­days and a healthy and hap­py start to the new year. All the best!