Design 2034: Podge attendees imagine what design industry will look like in 20 years. Vote for your favourite

By Rebecca Stewart, Trends Editor

July 21, 2014 | 4 min read

As well as Friends, Loaded, the Channel Tunnel and the Sony Playstation, 1994 was also the year that gave us the first ever Podge lunch, where Phil Jones summoned the great and the good of the creative community for what has since become one of the most anticipated events in the design industry calendar.

That now legendary first gathering took place at Quaglino’s, with an enviable list of attendees that included Alan Fletcher, Colin Porter, Erik Spiekermann, Glen Tutssel, Lynn Trickett, Malcolm Garrett, Marcello Minale, Mark Wickens, and many many more. And with its reputation for drunken revelry, Brian Webb says it was like the 60s: “If you can remember it, you weren't there."

The industry has of course undergone some drastic changes since then, as Bloom MD Jill Marshall recalls: “Back then contact reports were proper documents created on a word processor and a good suit always carried change so you could stop at a phone box to call and let the team know how the meeting had gone."

While NB Studio’s Alan Dye remembers: “I had no computer, there were no PDFs, and no account director.”

But while Letraset and spray mount gave way to Macs, the Podge lunch has continued uninterrupted, growing year after year.

Long-time Podge attendee Bill Wallsgrove calls it “a perennial favourite in the calendar since its inception”.

“It's social networking of the very best kind – in person.”

So, as the lunch reaches this monumental milestone we thought it would be fun to invite some 'Podgers' to imagine what the design industry will look like in another 20 years and design a poster around the theme 'Design 2034'.

You can see their creations below and vote for your favourite by clicking the ‘like’ button next to the poster. The winner will be revealed at the Podge lunch on Friday 25 July, and featured in the next issue of The Drum.