Fashion is the ultimate trend setting industry. Its fast pace and cutting edge visionaries are always a few seasons ahead of the current trends, forecasting the next revolution down the runway. So where will we be five months from now, and five years from now?

In our first Trends in Design night, Elle Canada's On-line Editor Lara Ceroni spoke about where fashion is going, and what is taking it there. Following Lara’s talk, Schad Boutique unveiled their top lines for Fall/Winter 2010 in an exclusive fashion show.

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Lara Ceroni

ON-LINE EDITOR, ELLE CANADA

Lara Ceroni is the senior editor for ElleCanada.com. She has been involved with the Elle Canada website since its launch in 2004 and oversees all editorial content that appears on the site, in addition to assuming the role of “host” for a multitude of ElleCanada.com videos which encompass exclusive industry events, as well as fashion and beauty launches.

Cities are changing. Canadian cites are changing faster than most. They are becoming more urban, larger in population and size, but wanting to stop the size growth. People want to walk more, drive less and experience more nature in the city. Urban agriculture... what’s that about? Our jobs are changing, the space allocated to jobs is changing and how we work is changing. Suddenly graffiti is a good thing ... it’s urban art. Suddenly design counts and is marketable.

In the second Trends in Design night, George Dark spoke about the changing dynamic of building a successful Canadian city.

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George Dark

PARTNER, URBAN STRATEGIES
HEAD, OTTAWA’S DOWNTOWN URBAN DESIGN STRATEGY

George Dark began practice as a landscape architect in the late 1970s and is today one of Canada’s most visible landscape architects and urban designers. He has worked throughout North America and the Caribbean, focusing over the past 15 years on the quality of urban environments. George is a fellow of both the Canadian and American Societies of Landscape Architects, one of only twenty people to have held joint fellowships since 1889.

Industrial or product design lives in the moments and experience of almost everything we do. It’s the toothbrush we use in the morning, the paperclip and laptop we use at work and the furniture we relax on in the evening. It’s also changing. New technologies are creating new possibilities, these create new needs and desires and in turn new economies.

In his Trends in Design presentation, Julian Goss spoke about where industrial design has been, where it is today and where it might be taking us in the near future.

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Julian Goss

PROGRAM CHAIR, INDUSTRIAL DESIGN DEPARTMENT, OCAD

Jules Goss is a designer, consultant, professor and program chair of the Industrial Design department at OCAD University. Jules has spent 20 years as a product designer and consultant, originally working for Ron Arad in the One Off Studios in London, UK and going on to design furniture, housewares and interior design. Today he is also a partner in HarrisonGoss, developing and integrating design solutions in the manufacturing and service sectors.

Architecture is constantly changing and reinventing itself. The ability to inspire and to enhance the way we live knows no limits. No longer seen as distinct objects in our cities, buildings today are all about integration, creating alliances with landscape, urbanism and sustainability, and new opportunities for inventiveness. These in turn allow for unexpected connections between culture, recreation, and work, and for explorations into integrated space, flexible space and transparency.

In Trends in Design 4, Robert Claiborne explored these latest trends and how they impact our urban experience.

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Robert Claiborne

DESIGN LEAD, CANNON DESIGN
LEAD ARCHITECT, LANSDOWNE PARK STADIUM

Rob Claiborne is a Design Architect at Cannon Design in Toronto, with a focus on urban, cultural and educational projects. Born and licensed in California and based today in Montreal and Toronto, Rob has worked on numerous large institutional, cultural and master planning projects throughout the world, including for many years at Studio Libeskind in Berlin. In addition to practicing architecture, Rob also teaches at McGill University in Montreal.

With the urbanization of Canadian cities comes a new way in which we live. The realities of city development – with land increasingly expensive to buy and buildings costly to construct – are resulting in smaller dwelling units. But less space doesn’t mean living less. By challenging the conventional product that we were building in our cities, we have come up with creative and intelligent uses of three dimensional space that have transferred the measure of value from square feet to cubic feet.

In our 5th Trends in Design night, Elaine Cecconi explained how we have adapted our design thinking to small spaces over the past ten years, and where we might be heading in the next.

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Elaine Cecconi

PARTNER, CECCONI SIMONE INTERIORS

Cecconi Simone is a multi-disciplinary interior design consulting firm which produces award winning designs for large scale condominium/loft developments and hotels, for clients in the restaurant and hospitality industry, for corporate clients ranging from major advertising agencies to insurance companies and for leading financial institutions and government agencies.

Furniture represents one of our most physical and immediate interactions with design. At work and at home, furniture design affects almost every moment of our life. And with the clean lines and spare ethos of modern day interior design, furniture has become one of the principal means of providing personality and identity to residential and office spaces.

Top Canadian furniture designer David Podsiadlo will reveal the process and challenges of designing, manufacturing and selling modern furniture, using specific pieces from his Gus* collection as case studies.

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David Podsialdo

PARTNER, GUS DESIGN GROUP

David Podsiadlo is a partner and head designer at Gus Design Group, an 11 year old Canadian furniture company based in Toronto. He studied Industrial Design before co-founding Stylegarage in the city's West Queen West neighbourhood.

His furniture designs emphasize raw materials, clean lines and basic forms. After gaining local notoriety with Stylegarage, David launched Gus* in 2001, which now designs, manufactures and sells furniture in North America and Asia.

Graphic design, if done well, is not always something we see or notice. But when we interact with the many devices or environments that allow us to access information or connect with others, it is graphic design that enables (or disables) the visual quality of this interaction. The complexity and immediacy of information and connection available to us today pose unique challenges to a profession that strives for visibility and invisibility at the same time.

Roderick Grant talked about where and how graphic design intersects with the world we live in, and the challenges the profession faces as our daily lives become more and more saturated with information and connection.

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Roderick Grant

CO-CHAIR, GRAPHIC DESIGN PROGRAM, OCAD

Roderick Grant is a professor, designer, and current Co-Chair of the Graphic Design Program at OCAD University. He has taught graphic design in Canada, the United States and the Middle East.

Prior to his work in education Roderick was a graphic designer with Methodologie, then nbbj in Seattle, Washington, working on complex information design and way-finding projects.