Atlanta Design Festival Celebrates Creatives from Around the World

September 17, 2025  by Karen Parrish in Business Strategy, Designer Weekly, Industry   

This year’s theme, BE MUSICA is presented as a position, not a slogan. “Design, like music, is a system of feeling. It structures emotion into experience. It creates harmony where there was conflict, and possibility where there was absence. Both music and design rely on composition: a process of assembling the disparate into something whole. Both require listening before expression, intuition before execution.”

Over the week-long event, Atlanta Design Festival invites the brightest creative leaders and organizations from Atlanta and around the world to host installations, exhibitions, design and architecture tours, film screenings, conference panels and more, to showcase Atlanta as a global powerhouse and innovator of ideas.

Highlighting a range of design practices including architecture & product design, digital & tech, marketing & advertising, Atlanta Design Festival welcomes audiences of all kinds to engage, experience, and enrich the cultural capital and creative communities of Atlanta.

Highlights for this year’s Festival include:
— Four flagship Creative Exchange events for architects, designers, and homeowners
— The return of the MA! Architecture Tours with access to Atlanta and Serenbe modern homes
— A new advisory board of global design leaders shaping the festival’s direction
— The theme “Music in Harmony,” exploring design as rhythm, collaboration, and excellence
— A partnership with Atlanta Art Fair during Atlanta Art Week

Please visit the Atlanta Design Festival Website for more details on all of these exciting highlights for the event.

The MA! Architecture Tours are avenues to showcase the best in modern residential, commercial, and contract design. With a focus on sustainable materials, architectural innovation, and interior design, these tours provide unique opportunities for professionals and enthusiasts alike to experience cutting-edge architecture. Self-guided tours will take place Oct 4 & 5. For tickets and tour locations, visit here. Additionally, the MA! Architecture Tours are currently in discussions with partners with plans to expand to cities nationwide. Interested partners can learn more or submit an inquiry at their website, architecturetours.us.

The Creative Exchange Events at the festival will take place Sept. 27-30. These professional development events are designed to support architects, designers and creative businesses.

Atlanta Design Festival has a new Advisory Board to shape the strategy and international outlook of the festival as it enters its next phase:

Ingrid van der Wacht – World Design Weeks board member; affiliated with Dutch Design Foundation
Katherine Dirga – Director, MARTA ArtBound, Atlanta’s transit-based public art program
Todd Bertsch – Architect, former Design Director at HOK
Andrew Graves – Economic Researcher of ORTUS + Author of the Design Council UK’s premier design economy study. Specializing in brand insight and culture
Dr. EunSook Kwon – Chair and Professor, School of Industrial Design, Georgia Tech College of Design
LeKeith Taylor – Principal, M-SCELLANEOUS™️ and Co-Founder, DESYN.LAB™️, working at the intersection of equity and design
Adriane Jefferson – Executive Director of The City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs
Simon “Sy” Gray – Brand builder, Co-Founder of The Honey Pot Co. and DESYN.LAB™️, and BFA student at SCAD, based in Amsterdam

Atlanta Design Festival is produced by MA! Design is Human. https://atlantadesignfestival.net/