We’ve brought together the best conferences and events for designers across digital, UX, branding, graphics, advertising and more from around the UK this 2019 – and a few major ones from overseas you might want to consider booking a trip to.
Events featured here will inspire you, conferences will help build your skills and facilitate meeting like-minded people to build a support network around yourself. We’ll be updating throughout the year as more events are announced, so keep checking back.
We kick off with over fifteen conferences that are mighty in size and local to the UK or worth travelling to, beginning with London’s VFX Festival and ending with US highlight Adobe Max. We’ve also included some regular events you can attend without having to break the bank.
Offset
April 5-7
Dublin
With over 2,500 attendees each year, Offset has fast become one of the world’s most inspirational, educational and vocational conferences for the design and creative industries.
This year’s speakers include Trump-baiting illustrator Edel Rodriguez and graphic design legend Lance Wyman.
Visual Playground
April 6-7
Bucharest
A new one on our radar is the Visual Playground in Romania, which stashes together eight days of workshops, a two-day conference, two exhibitions and mural painting.
This year’s lineup for the weekend conference includes Hey Studio, Handsome Frank, illustrator Emiliano Ponzi and designer Jordan Metcalf, nine speakers in total with an afterparty promised afterwards for attendees.
OFFF Barcelona
April 25-27
Barcelona
OFFF is a festival that hosts acclaimed international speakers, as well as workshops, activities and performances. It’s for designers, developers, creatives and students, and it rolls around once a year.
The speaker line-up for 2019 includes London animation studio Art&Graft, Digital Arts faves Cabeza Patata (pictured), typographer Craig Black and games artist Conrad Roset.
Awwwards
May 8-10
San Francisco
Prize-giving is just one aspect of the global Awwwards event, with the Conference being an ideal showcase for designers, web developers and ‘digital dreamers’ from a whole range of fields.
This year’s first event took place in Amsterdam, with another one in San Francisco this spring that’s hosting Dribble founder Dan Cederholm and Google UX design lead Laura Granka.
Pictoplasma
May 8-12
Berlin
If you don’t fancy a trip to SF then keep it (kinda) local by going to Germany for one of our perennial faves, the Pictoplasma Berlin Conference & Festival.
Unique in its celebration of character art from a wide range of mediums, this year’s 15th edition will see talks from Jeron Braxton, Laurie Rowan, Luke Pearson and Cabeza Patata.
See their work and that of other announced speakers in our curated gallery of the best character artists to watch in 2019, and find out more on locations and tickets through the Pictoplasma site.
D&AD Festival
May 21-23
London
D&AD Festival, the UK’s largest event for global creative talent, returns 21-23 May 2019 to The Old Truman Brewery, London. The chosen theme for this year’s festival is ‘Shaping the Future’, echoing D&AD’s position as an organisation on a mission to drive the creative industries forward.
Must-see speakers include Dan Goods, creative director at NASA, Eleanor Pinfield, head of tube gallery project Art on the Underground, graphic designer Emily Forgot and Colonel Ben Wilde, Britain’s assistant director of army recruiting speaking about this year’s controversial ‘snowflake’ campaign.
The 2019 Festival will culminate with the 57th D&AD Awards Ceremony on 23 May 2019. The Awards are open for entry at this link and will close 20 February 2019. Look out in autumn also for a launch event for another D&AD related festival, an as-yet-unnamed global event in partnership with Guardian Media Group that is due to begin in 2020. The project was first announced in 2018; we’ll update with details once they come in.
