At the iF DESIGN AWARD NIGHT on May 15, more than 1.500 guests from 42 different countries celebrated the winners of the iF DESIGN AWARD 2023 at the magnificent Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin. During the festive award ceremony, Christoph Böninger, chairman of the iF Design Foundation, used the grand stage as a platform to present the objectives, tasks, and activities of the iF Design Foundation.
»Sustainability is the central issue. Our society is facing massive changes. Our industries must change their focus from economic value to the contribution to the common good, i.e. the public value of their products and services. And designers should not just follow the industry: they must be the ones to initiate the change.«
Christoph Böninger, Chairman of the Board of the iF Design Foundation
In response to the question as to how future designers could prepare themselves for a changing world and the challenges this poses for their profession, Christoph Böninger referred to the Designing Design Education Whitebook, which was published in 2021. In consideration of the current changes in the design field, the Foundation asked more than 2021 experts worldwide what they thought the future of design education could or should look like. The findings published in the Whitebook were complemented by a recently published study on the public value of design. For the iF Design Foundation, the results of both studies suggest that future design education will need to equip young designers with new skills: particularly important in this context will be a combination of traditional skills and artificial intelligence paired with new interdisciplinary compentencies. Christoph Böninger specifically highlighted the significance of Learning & Teaching Sciences, Personality Growth and Sustainability to enable designers to »interface« with the future spectrum of other professions in the industry.
