Lipstick made from algae and lampshades grown from bacteria feature at Isola Design Festival, a six-month event dedicated to emerging designers and independent studios that culminates during Milan design week.
Organised by Isola Design District, one of the districts that make up Milan design week each year, Isola Design Festival is a hybrid event that has been running since April as a digital festival. It will culminate with a physical show during Milan design week, which starts tomorrow.
The platform was developed by the founders of Isola Design District as a response to the coronavirus pandemic, which prevented physical events and exhibitions from taking place in 2020.
"We didn't give up," said Gabriele Cavallaro, co-founder and CEO of Isola Design Group. "We wanted to switch a critical situation into a new opportunity so we began a digitalization process that led us to launch our curated online platform." "Our aim was to support the designers in our community through such a hard period. Twelve months later, we can say that we reached our goal."

In total 350 designer's profiles and almost 700 projects feature on Isola Design District's digital platform, a selection of which will be showcased at Isola Design Festival's physical event during Milan Design Week from 5-10 September.
The selected works explore experimental design processes "that can be related to the product itself or either its production process," according to Elif Re...