Cutting-edge Design Conference Launched
By Gary Tufel -- Tradeshow Week, 3/6/2006
A conference for exhibit and multi-disciplinary designers will take place April 30–May 2 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
Exhibitor Magazine will host the Gravity Free annual conference which, according to Lee Knight, founder of the magazine and EXHIBITOR, will bring together more than 300 thinkers and practitioners from around the world to hear the latest ideas, not only in exhibit design, but in architecture, retail display, themed entertainment, product design, gastronomy, business, technology and media. Hotel design, graphic design, brand management and museum design will also be on the agenda.
"Our industry relies heavily on cross-pollination of ideas from other disciplines, so we've gotten about 30 world-class designers and thinkers to speak," Knight said. He noted the event's unique breadth of content and the quality of those delivering it, and said attendees would gain an understanding of how their own work can benefit from the larger world of design.
The name, Gravity Free, was the result of a brief advisory board discussion and intended to conjure up such associations as "without resistance," "friction-free," "light," and "the buoyancy and lifting power of good ideas," Knight said.
Knight in 1991 launched the Exhibit Design conference, which was taken over a few years later by the Exhibit Designers & Producers Assn. and eventually discontinued. Knight said EDPA's focus is on management. Gravity Free, he said, will "aim wider."
Designers get first priority for event registration, which costs $1,500.
