Design is often understood through objects, outputs, and outcomes. Yet its most profound impact lives in the physical, digital, and emotional spaces where human connection is made possible.
This year’s International Design Day theme, The Spaces Between, hosted by the Society for Experiential Graphic Design (SEGD), invites designers to focus on these thresholds where ideas become experiences, where individuals become communities, and where design shapes how we belong, relate, and coexist.
Why the spaces in between matter
Design mediates the physical, digital, and emotional spaces where human connection is possible. It challenges us to facilitate genuine connection, not just efficiency, but the quality of human interaction.
International Design Day 2026, The Spaces In Between, invites designers to look beyond objects and outcomes and toward the shared experiences that shape how we belong, communicate, and coexist. Design lives in the in-between, the thresholds where ideas become experiences and strangers become communities.
Design is not just what we make. It is what happens between people.
The spaces in between include moments of transition, exchange, and encounter. They shape how people feel welcomed or excluded, how trust is built, and how meaning is shared. These spaces are often the least discussed and least consciously designed, yet they quietly influence how we move through the world together.
At a time of constant communication and increasing disconnection, design has the power to rebuild the spaces that bring people together, across streets, screens, museums, objects, and cities.
International Design Day is a global invitation to designers, educators, organisations, and communities to design for connection and use creativity as common ground.
Participation may range from in-depth gatherings, such as a symposium of speakers, to lighter creative discourse shared through social platforms.
Ways to participate include:
- Hosting or attending conversations and forums
- Creating events inspired by The Spaces In Between
- Sharing reflections, projects, or questions on social media
- Using the IDD2026 toolkit to support local participation
