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Melba, Bulgaria’s main design festival, is back for a seventh year in a row

October 21, 2024

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.

Open your mind to new ideas and innovations at the symposium and hear from:

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 Sarvira is 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.

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.

Sixth edition of the MELBA Design Festival

November 1, 2023

Only few days are left until the sixth edition of MELBA Design Festival in Sofia. Between 2 and 12 November, we welcome prominent representatives of the European design scene in a one-day symposium with lectures, focus on the collaboration of Bulgarian designers and manufacturers over the past year and engage the audience in exhibitions, discussions and classes. Check out all the details about the programme and participants on our festival website and be sure to add some of the activities to your calendar:

Opening of the exhibition Object of Relationships. Review of Bulgarian Design 2023 on 2 November at 6:30 PM at KO-OP (17 Yanko Sakuzov Blvd.): the exhibition focuses on the interaction between designers and producers, carefully examining the specific potential and documenting the production process of creating new design objects through dialogue and collaboration. Curated by Dima Stefanova, a designer and cultural entrepreneur committed to projects in design, art and social innovation. She is the founder of the educational platform Know-How Show-How, which promotes knowledge exchange and alternative learning methods. Philip Boyadjiev is the author of the exhibition design and visual layout. Free entrance. The exhibition will be on view until November 12.

Like every year the festival is focused on its International Symposium with outstanding design specialists, presenting a mix of different fields in one day. Read more about this year’s speakers on our website. The Symposium is taking place on 4 November at 11:00 AM live in Hall 1 at Toplocentrala or online.

Tickets for the symposium can be purchased here. All lectures are in English.

This year MELBA is also offering a diverse mix of EXTRAS:

For the second year in a row, the international design festival MELBA includes in its program the exhibition Diploma Project, which presents the diploma works of students in various fields – from sculpture, through design and illustration, to scenography and fashion. The exhibition aims to present both the diversity in techniques, media and themes that excite the young generation of today, and to look at the way they make sense of tomorrow.

This year the exhibition focuses on Radina Yotova, a visual artist in the field of digital arts. As part of the Graduation Project exhibition, Radina will present the video installation Now You See Me: Re-Appropriating the Visual Landscape of Our Digital World, with which she graduated in Graphic Design from the Royal Academy of Arts, KABK, in The Hague in 2022. The interactive video installation invites visitors to enter a sensory-engaging space and engage in a provocative experiment exploring the absurdity that arises in trying to mimic human perception with algorithms.

The exhibition can be seen between 2 and 12 November at the UniCredit Studio Gallery (7 Sveta Nedelya Square, Sofia) on weekdays between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM. The official presentation of the exhibition will be on Tuesday, November 7, at 6 PM.

For the first year MELBA Design Festival includes in its programme a design residency organised by Komplekt in partnership with the Hungarian Cultural Institute Liszt in Sofia. The residency programme is committed to creating more space for research, thinking and critique in the field of design, providing conditions for the creation of a new design project inspired by Sofia as a base, working environment and laboratory for new ideas. The Design Residency provides an opportunity to meet and exchange and make sustainable contacts with colleagues from Bulgaria and the local creative community.

After a careful selection of young, contemporary Hungarian designers from various fields, Komplekt has settled on Budapest-based graphic designer and illustrator Kata Moravszki, who will immerse herself in an exploration of the local context together with graphic designer Richárd Lakosi over the course of three weeks. The result of her working stay will be presented in an exhibition that recreates her impressions in a new visual project during the sixth edition of MELBA Design Festival. The exhibition will open on Friday, November 3, at 5 PM in the gallery of the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Sofia (16 Aksakov Street) and will be on view until November 12 on weekdays between 10 AM and 5PM.

The exhibition Just Once: Selected Works of Studio Najbrt traces the path of visual language and explores the changes, diversity, innovative approaches and freedom of expression that mark the work of Studio Najbrt, one of the most famous and successful Czech graphic design studios, founded in 1994 by Aleš Najbrt and Pavel Lev in Prague. It recaps some of their key work and visual principles, looking at their inspiration from art, the typefaces they designed, and their collaborations with photographers such as Josef Koudelka. The exhibition also looks at the sustainability and broad impact of Studio Najbrt’s vibrant, distinctive and colorful work, and brings together a wide range of logos, posters, book designs and other projects.

The exhibition opens on Friday 3 November at 6 PM in the Czech Centre Gallery (100 Rakovski Street) and can be viewed during the festival on weekdays between 1 PM and 6 PM.

World Kindness Day has been celebrated every 13 November since 1998. The Italian typography studio Zetafonts celebrates it with an exhibition of posters collected after an open call. This year 180 designers, typographers and illustrators from around the world are joining in their appeal for meaningful messages that stand for goodness. The initiative earns Zetafonts a 2023 Gold Indigo Design Award in the category of Integrated Graphic Design for Social Change. Fight for Kindness in Sofia showcases a selection of inspiring work by local and international artists.

The exhibition can be viewed during the festival (02 -12.11.2023) at Coffee Syndicate (3 Moskovska Street, Sofia) from Monday to Friday between 8:00 AM and 8:00 PM and on Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM.

A part of our partnership content is the exhibition Croatian Design X, presenting the best of contemporary Croatian design over the last decade. It arrives in Bulgaria thanks to Zagreb Design Week. The curatorial concept (Tina Marković and Daniel Tomičić) is to present products not yet available on the Bulgarian market. Twenty-one exhibitors have been selected to offer a fascinating insight into the vibrant and dynamic world of Croatian design.

Opening: 1 November, Wednesday, 6:30 PM | Espace PORT A, Triaditsa 5 Str.

The exhibition can be viewed until 12 November inclusive every day between 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM.

The exhibition, organized by the design, interior and architecture magazine MD, presents real products by some of the most talented contemporary Bulgarian designers working in Bulgaria and abroad since 2000. Some of the products shown in the exhibition have been awarded the most prestigious international design award Red Dot. The objects are part of those included in the first book on contemporary Bulgarian product design in the 21st century, published by Bismarck Publishing House and released in April 2023.

Our MELBA SCHOOL series continues with an educational class for proactive designers with presenters Maja Lalić, architect, founder of the multidisciplinary cultural platform and festival Mikser, and co-founder of Young Balkan Designers, a regional platform that aims to discover, develop and promote creative talent from the Balkan region in the field of sustainable design; and Jelena Matić, furniture and interior designer and co-founder of Young Balkan Designers.

The class is suitable for students and/or professionals in furniture/industrial/product design or architecture. Participants will explore design as a strategic and dynamic discipline that requires proactive thinking, adaptability and a holistic approach. The thematic focuses within the workshop are:

Design competitions: in-depth review and analysis of various international design competitions: categories and criteria in selecting finalists; building skills to research and identify appropriate competitions based on interests and experience;
Creating a persuasive portfolio: strategies for putting together and presenting a winning portfolio (with personalized guidance);
Concept development: techniques for generating unique and innovative design concepts;
Opportunities to collaborate with international industry professionals;
Building strategic design thinking;

All details for registration and a detailed class schedule (Friday, November 10, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM) can be found HERE.

Within the sixth festival edition the shared space for hand screen printing Sito Studio organizes:

Advanced Screen Printing Workshop with Diego Mena (Spain): designer, illustrator and founder of MULTIPLE EDITIONS, a screen printing and art production studio specialising in high-end limited edition prints by contemporary artists;
A risograph printing workshop with Oscar Ginter from the Parisian studio Qiuntal Atelier. Oscar will talk about the intricacies of this print, the training explores new possibilities in the field of art printing and is aimed at artists, designers and illustrators with an interest in printing technology.

We can’t wait to share with you what we’ve been working on over the past months!

With many thanks to all our partners!

Studio PUNKT about good design and the visual identity of MELBA 2022

November 22, 2022

For more than 15 years Studio PUNKT has been developing brand identities, illustrations, typefaces and conceptual communication campaigns for clients around the world. The team strives to translate ideas into real, authentic stories told through a sensitive visual language and through a variety of media.

It was Studio PUNKT that created the visual identity for the fifth edition of the MELBA Design Festival. We talk to them about their activities, the challenges in their craft, some interesting projects and turning points in the graphic designer’s creative path.

Could you please introduce studio PUNKT in a few words?

We are a creative studio working in a team of 7 people, based in Plovdiv and Sofia. We’ve been around for 15 years and until now we haven’t stopped being motivated and trying to change the world around us a little bit for the better.

How did you work as a team for 15 years already?

It comes naturally to us. With each successful project, the tasks become more interesting and require more varied approaches. The team is gradually enriched with colleagues and everyone contributes to the overall look of the studio. We are flexible enough and often have to have a colleague to replace another one in a project and continue the work in their own style, but this has always taken us in the right direction so far. We also constantly rely on our wide network of good partnerships and connections with colleagues when we know our expertise is not enough.

What is the current visual identity of the MELBA Festival and what did you want to communicate with it?

It’s not our first time creating a festivals visual identity, but it’s our first time doing it for a design festival. Most of the audience at such events are our colleagues, designers, people with a high visual culture.We decided to take a risk with the idea and ask the question in a provocative way: how easy is it to be a designer in 2022?We achieved this primarily with the colors #FFFF00 and #FF0000 (for those who don’t read HEX, this is the cheapest, easiest and most effective way to get attention) plus disproportionately stretched shapes and quick, “notebook” pencil drawings.Another thing that inspired us was the festival’s first visual identity, created by NEXT-DC (the digital agency which is responsible for all the cool MELBA looks so far). We wanted to make reference to what that first vision very successfully managed to communicate – a sweet, diverse, delicious and classy experience.

Materials for MELBA 2022, created by studio PUNKT 🙌

What were the main creative challenges you encountered while working on the visual identity for MELBA 2022?

Mainly how far down the rabbit hole we could crawl. We had a big concern, especially for the festivals website, that in a UX sense it would become too inaccessible. However, after a few tests we think we achieved a good balance.

Where do you find a dose of inspiration when you lack of ideas?

We have diverse personalities in our team and everyone has their own interests. When we’re together, it’s rare for ideas to get stuck because most of the time we inspire each other. Beside of that we have a solid archive of the coolest brochures and flyers that each of us has collected when we’ve been somewhere abroad. Occasionally, one of us happens to browse them, and accidentally it turns into a teambuilding exercise where everyone shares their impressions or memories of one place or another.