Design Made in Hamburg
In Hamburg there are around 14,000 designers working in almost 3,000 designer offices, international agency networks and companies. No other German city has as many designers as Hamburg. The spectrum of design services offered in Hamburg ranges from industrial, product, package, corporate, web and brand design to jewellery, fashion and textile design. Hamburg’s design industry is one of the city’s strongest branches of the creative industries, alongside advertising, media and software/games. And by the way: the annual turnover generated by Hamburg’s designers is almost twice as high as that generated in Berlin.
What are Hamburg’s designers up to?
Hamburg’s designers work as industrial and product designers, they are in charge of interior, trade fair and exhibition design, packaging, brand and web design, and they create fashion and textile designs. Many of the design services developed in Hamburg are well-known far beyond the city’s boundaries and have become part and parcel of our daily lives: these include e.g. the stacked bed by Rolf Heide, the Ligne Rose bed by Peter Maly, the bathrooms of Lufthansa’s A380 fleet by MuellerRomca, album covers for Jan Delay by Typeholics, the “Stern” magazine by Johannes Erler, Beck’s beer bottles and crates by Just Blue Design, private label products for food retailer REWE by Peter Schmidt Group, “Budni Care” products for drugstore chain Budnikowsky by VISID, and the dairy products of north German eco-farm Öko-Melburen by design agency Mutter.
designxport and designxport.de
The Hamburg-based design centre designxport in the Elbtorquartier of the HafenCity Hamburg district was opened in the summer of 2014. Since then, designxport has been hosting exhibitions, talks and workshops on contemporary design from Hamburg and the world. What is more, the affiliated Research Lounge invites anyone interested to visit their reference library, their material and magazine archives, their café and their design shop with products designed in Hamburg. The Research Lounge is open Tuesday to Saturday from 12pm to 6pm; admission is free.
