Theme

Design the World You Want

Design is powered by creativity. Enriching culture and society, design allows us to express, question, propose and test ideas about life, and in the world.

The scope for design is boundless: design intersects economics, health, science, ecology and technology – right across the spectrum. Design is everywhere.

In reaction to the growth in the influence, complexity and ubiquity of design, Melbourne Design Week calls for meaningful opportunities for the public, government, industry and the design sector to meet on common ground, and to experience, examine, communicate and think about design.

Since 2021, Melbourne Design Week has celebrated this potential of design to transform our environment – from the inside our homes to the entire planet – with the call-for-action for individuals and organisations to ‘Design the world you want’. MDW2025 continues this theme asking designers, architects and creatives to explore the capacity for design to transform existing paradigms and create a better tomorrow. Responding to this call-to-action, designers are invited to use their skills to drive positive change, offering innovative solutions to economic, social, and ecological challenges.

For 2025 we ask participants to consider projects that might offer solutions that heal, replenish, and enable life, revealing design as an act of repair and transformation.

As we look to the future of our city, suburbs and regions – and further to a global community with shared responsibilities – innovative design becomes a key to a better tomorrow. Melbourne Design Week 2025 is the time to look together towards the world we might make through design. Design the world you want.

Melbourne Design Week is underpinned by five core principles developed by Creative Victoria as part of the Creative State 2025. These are:

  • First Peoples first (including the 11 Guiding Principles of Aboriginal Self-Determination)
  • For every Victorian
  • Whole of state
  • Health and wellbeing, and
  • Environmental impact

For more information about the Creative State 2025 Strategy visit Creative State 2025