From 1 to 10 November 2024, Sofia once again welcomes the international Melba design festival. The festival heralds new and surprising approaches and is a vibrant platform for ideas, diverse perspectives and knowledge. Melba is a driving force that enriches and enhances society. The festival’s program offers a deep dive into relevant topics within the creative industries and brings together some of the most influential figures in the field of graphic design, design research, illustration, architecture, curatorial work, product and industrial design.

Melba Sofia Design Festival presents an opportunity of broadening the discussion on the topic of design and its role in society. It is also an inspiration and enjoyment with its ten days of exhibitions, creative workshops, discussions, and the one-day Melba symposium, sharing its content across various audiences.

Spend a day at the International Melba Symposium

The International Melba Symposium is the signature event of the festival and will take place on the 2nd of November at Hall 1 of Toplocentrala. This is an unmissable all-day design and creative conference with some of the most exciting thinkers, makers and movers in design, branding, illustration, interiors, materials and beyond.

Speakers include:

• Seetal Solanki, founder of the design studio Ma-tt-er, a materials designer, researcher and educator, who works with brands such as NIKE, Google, Venice Biennale, Dezeen, IKEA/SPACE10, British Council, The Design Museum London, Hyundai;
• Spanish designer Max Enrich provokes our sense of aesthetics and functionality by creating furniture more akin to sculptures; his collectible objects bring character and joy to any interior; among his clients are brands like Hermès;
• Bram Broerse and Maurits Wouters, founders of Studio Airport, agency of the year at the last European Design Awards; an independent practice in graphic design and film that explores the intersections of these two disciplines with a balanced approach between the commercial and the creative; among their awards are The Webby Awards, Awwwards, ADC Awards, Stack Awards;
• Anna Sarvirais a Kiev-born illustrator, curator and art director who co-founded the Pictoric Illustrators Club, a cultural organisation for exhibitions of illustration and printmaking, which launched the #SupportUkrainePIC project with the start of the war in Ukraine;
• Kirsten Algera and Ernst van der Hoeven, Dutch art historians and designers, founders and art directors of MacGuffin Magazine (2015), an award-winning design and craft magazine that tells compelling stories about the lives of ordinary objects.

This is your chance to reserve early bird tickets while they are still available here! See you then.

Early bird price – 80 BGN (until October 15).

Regular price – 95 BGN.

Matter of the Image: Review of Bulgarian Design 2024

The exhibition Matter of the Image: Review of Bulgarian Design 2024 is another highlight in the festival’s program. For this year’s edition of the state of Bulgarian visual culture Komplekt has invited as curators the respected creative collective TI-RE – Andrea Popyordanova, Viktoria Staykova and Mila Yaneva-Tabakova. Their take on the brief explores the theme of reproduction as an integral part of the creative product through a series of experiments with different printing techniques such as offset, digital, screen and riso printing, vinyl and others. Participants are nine young Bulgarian artists working in the field of illustration, typography and photography. Georgi Sharov is the author of the exhibition design and visual layout. Matter of the Image can be seen at the Swimming Pool Gallery. The opening marks the launch of the festival and is on 31.10.2024, Thursday at 7 pm.

And More Melba Program

Other festival’s highlights include the exhibition Diploma Project, which presents Danail Kapchin and his fashion collection Pandæmonium. It explores the role of demons in contemporary society through the language of clothing and invites visitors to engage in a

provocative experiment, cleverly mixing shapes, silhouettes, scents and sound through the non-verbal language of fashion.

For a second consecutive year Komplekt produce a design residency as a main accent in the festival’s program. In 2024 this is a collaboration between the poet Bojana Slavkova and the illustrator Stefani Nedelcheva, and in partnership with the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. “Mamo Dzhanka” (Mother Cherry Plum) presents the results of their stay in the Rhodope Mountains during the month of August.

The festival programme is on the Facebook and Instagram profiles of Melba Design Initiatives, as well as on the website festival.melba.bg.

About Melba
The Melba Design Festival mixes different perspectives on design in various creative activities – an international symposium, an exhibition-review of Bulgarian design, accompanying exhibitions, workshops, lectures, discussions, etc. It is part of Melba, a series of design initiatives that the cultural producers at Komplekt launched in 2017. The project has quickly become a unique platform with a strong community and carefully curated content: the Melba online bilingual Archive of contemporary Bulgarian designers, Melba Meetings with local design heroes and an annual Sofia Design Festival.

About the Festival’s Producers Komplekt
Komplekt is a cultural management and consulting agency with a focus on design and other creative practices. The founders and drivers of the organisation (2015) are Adriana Andreeva and Boiana Gjaurova, who have over 15 years of professional experience in the fields of creative consulting, cultural management and editorial work, with a focus on design and visual culture. Komplekt is the founder and producer of the annual international design festival in Sofia – Melba and Melba Design Initiatives.