Top 5 things to do at Dundee Design Festival this year

Rachael Cloughton
21 May 2019

credit: Stacey Hunter

Including poster making, writing messages to the city and creating a custom scent

Now in its third iteration, the Dundee Design Festival has returned to the UK's only UNESCO City of Design, with this year's festival exploring on what makes a 'liveable/loveable' city. To help you decide what to see, we've rounded up some of the top things to do while you're out and about.

See Design in action

Dundee-based designers Lynne McLachlan, Jen Stewart, Steph Liddle and Kevin Sinclair are currently creating a range of products from a specially designed lab inside Dundee's historic Keiller Centre. Take a close-up look as a collection of limited edition objects – from 3-D printed brooches, screen printed t-shirts and ceramic 'Moment Cups' – are manufactured on site. At the end of the festival everything will be available to buy, so you can take a bit of design festival history home.

Say something to the city

'Poster Playground' invites you to 'say something to your city' by creating your own poster which will be displayed at sites across Dundee for the duration of the festival. Log on to the Dundee Design Festival website and access the 'self service' web programme. From here you can write a message to the city, using a bold new typeface designed especially for the project by artist and musician Tommy Perman, then go find it!

Trade up your design books at the Living Library

Check out the custom-built, pop-up workspace in the Keiller Centre, designed by Roots Furniture and Aymeric Renoud. There are large shared desks to work at and more relaxed areas where you can enjoy a selection of design books and magazines. This year DDF are also running a design book swap: bring along any design book and swap it for one in the collection.

Beat the Claw

In the spirit of shopping centres past providing arcade-style entertainment, the DDF team have reinvented the traditional grabber machine with some unique, design-led prizes up for grabs.

Smell the future of Dundee

Fragrance design studio Arboretum, led by Clare Weale and designer Pete Thomas, are asking audiences at the festival to share with them their vision for Dundee 2039. From these ideas they will create a custom scent, inspired by a collective vision (or smell) of the future, which will be launched during the festival.

Dundee Design Festival, Keiller Centre, Dundee, Tue 21–Tue 28 May.