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On October 5, the Haus der Wirtschaft in Stuttgart became a meeting point for designers, creatives, and people interested in design. For one day, the ADC Design Conference 2026 placed the practice of design at the center of attention. Under the guiding theme “Change the World with Design,” the conference explored typography, branding, motion design, visual systems, spaces, and architecture, but above all, it asked what good design means today.
Around 600 visitors and 40 speakers came together across two stages to discuss current developments as well as fundamental questions surrounding design practice. While the Creative Stage focused on concrete projects, creative processes, and personal perspectives, the Business Stage looked more closely at the economic and social significance of design.
What remains when AI can design everything?
One question ran like a common thread throughout the day: What makes design distinctive when images, layouts, and ideas can now be generated within seconds?
For Cat How of How&How, the answer lies not in producing more, but in creating meaning. Her statement, “Looking good is the entry fee. Meaning is the competition,” captures one of the conference’s central ideas: visual quality alone is no longer enough. Design needs to communicate an idea or emotion, develop a point of view, and have a reason for looking the way it does.
This also changes the role of designers. As technical production becomes increasingly automated, other skills become more important: observing, contextualizing, questioning, making decisions, and developing concepts. And, perhaps most importantly, understanding why a design works, or why it does not.
Between Craft and Technology
One of the most interesting aspects of the conference was that it did not focus exclusively on AI. Rather than treating technology as an opponent of design, the discussions repeatedly used it as an opportunity to reconsider the role of human expertise within new production processes.
Annie Atkins offered insights into her work as a production designer for film and showed a form of design in which materiality, research, and craftsmanship are essential. Nicholas Blechman of The New Yorker, meanwhile, explored the evolution of visual identity and the question of how iconic design can change without losing its recognizability.
Architecture offered further perspectives on design as an interplay of concept, space, and context. Patrick Lüth of Snøhetta and Kian Yam of MLKK Studio presented projects that are convincing not only through their form, but also through their relationship with their surroundings and the people who use them.
These different perspectives made one thing clear: design can hardly be reduced to a single process. Between sketching, type, material, space, movement, and digital tools, different ways of thinking and making continue to emerge, with or without AI.
Design as an Attitude
The topics discussed on the Business Stage also went beyond the traditional understanding of design as a purely visual discipline. Discussions addressed how products can become cultural statements, how heritage brands navigate between tradition and transformation, and why physical spaces are gaining importance again despite increasing digitalization.
One particularly interesting idea was that design does not simply make things visible, but is itself part of cultural development. A product such as a Leica camera can communicate an attitude. A space can make a brand tangible. A visual identity such as Lufthansa’s can preserve history while simultaneously enabling change.
Design is therefore constantly moving between preservation and renewal.
Why the “How” Matters Again
Perhaps one of the central questions of this year’s ADC Design Conference was this: As the possibilities of production change, how we design becomes increasingly important.
How does an idea emerge? How does research become a concept? How are decisions made? And what role do intuition, experience, and craftsmanship play in the process?
These questions were also at the heart of the panel discussion “(Aus)Bildung im Medien- und KI-Zeitalter.” Prof. Julia Kühne, Prof. Richard Jung, Elisabeth Plass from EIGA, and Prof. Betty Schimmelpfennig discussed which skills designers will need in the future and what they may need to be able to do better than AI.
The discussion was not only about how expectations towards young designers are changing, but also about what needs to change within design education itself. Which skills should universities teach when tools and production processes are evolving at an ever faster pace? And how can students prepare for a professional world whose conditions are still taking shape?
One sentence from the discussion stayed particularly present: “Tolerating uncertainty.”
Perhaps it captures quite precisely what matters in a time of rapid technological change. Not every question needs to be answered immediately. Not every process needs to be defined in advance. And not every new technology needs to be integrated into a fixed workflow straight away.
The conference made clear that design will not remain relevant because designers can produce faster than machines. It remains relevant where people make decisions, connect ideas and create meaning.
Because perhaps this is the real challenge of the years ahead: not being able to design everything, but knowing what should be designed at all, and why.
