“Design Week Turkey 2021”, Turkey’s most comprehensive design event traditionalized by the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM), will start on Friday. Turkey’s goal is to be in the top 5 in the Global Design Rankings, leaving countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Canada to the 7th place in terms of score.
“Design Week Turkey 2021”, Turkey’s most comprehensive design event, will be held at Halic Congress Center on 17-18 December. Within the framework of the program, 12 panels and conferences, more than 60 speakers, more than 20 exhibitions, installations and workshops will take place. World Design Organization (WDO) President Srini Srinivasan, WDO Board Member Thomas Garvey, Architect and Designer Alessandro Colombo, our world-famous designers Hakan Akkaya and Asli Filinta will also take part in the program, and the importance of design will be emphasized.
Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM) President Ismail Gulle mentioned that Design Week Turkey has attracted a lot of attention this year and said, “Precious local and foreign names, veterans of our industry came together to support this design ecosystem. Design Week has an important place in our efforts to increase our added value in exports and branded exports. We advise our exporters to focus on quality rather than quantity.”
TURKEY IS TARGETING THE TOP 5 IN DESIGN
Informing that Turkey surpassed countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Canada in the Global Design Rankings, it ranked 7th on a score basis, and continued as follows:
“This is quite an important achievement. Our goal is to take this success even further in the coming period and become one of the top 5 countries. In order to achieve this goal, Design Week Turkey assumes a very important responsibility. In addition, the “Design Istanbul” project of our Assembly continues rapidly. We have prepared a project in which we directly reflect all the achievements we have gained from Design Week Turkey. Within the scope of the Design Istanbul project, we discussed our works from a wide perspective, from design competitions to the establishment of design streets, from the Design Istanbul museum to the creation of innovative workspaces. With the project, we aim to improve the exports of creative industries by increasing the export of design products, as well as making Istanbul an important design destination in the world. In addition, we will keep our finger on the pulse of the design world with Design İst talks that will be attended by important designers from all over the world.”
“WE WILL SWITCH TO A BRAND NEW EXPORT STRATEGY”
Emphasizing that a new era has begun in the global supply chain and the export family has managed to use this break in favor, Gulle made the following statements: “We believe in the power of design to make this success sustainable. Because in this upcoming period, competition will not be solely focused on price. In the new period, the titles of design, sustainability and added value will be the factors that will determine our competitive power. This shows that we need to move to a brand new export strategy focused on sustainability and technology, sensitive to the environment and high brand value. As TIM, we continue to prepare our exporters for all changing conditions in global trade.”
EXPORT WILL RISE WITH DESIGN INDUSTRY
TIM President Ismail Gulle said, “Now there is a Turkey that designs, dreams, produces these dreams and exports them to all corners of the world” and emphasized that with Design Week Turkey, they aim to contribute to this valuable design ecosystem and to further develop this culture throughout the country. Pointing out that they are behind all designers who are not content with what they have and dare to do more, Gulle said, “Because we believe wholeheartedly that we will create added value with them and develop with them. With our recently increasing export figures, we can clearly see that we are closer than ever to our target of ‘Turkey with Foreign Trade Surplus’. For this, we need to correctly determine how to create sustainable exports and added value. Today, the way to sustainable export growth is through value-added production. The way of value-added production is R&D, innovation, brand and design. Today, we consider design from these four important elements. As TIM, we believe that Turkey will rise with exports and exports with design.”
Source: NTV / Translated by Irem Yildiz