It’s that time of the year, and the community is getting pumped for the largest creative gathering in the NGD universe – The NGDX Liftoff Conference. It’s a conference like none other, promising a wrap-up of bothersome design issues and an extension of skills and ideas possessed by designers in the community. But there’s something more which we are excited to share with you all, something we doubt you’ve heard of and one we are sure will rock your seats: The Designathon.
Read below to know what it is and why we are sure you can’t stay still after hearing what it portends for creatives in the community.
A Show Like None Other
2021 NGDX was the maiden conference of the Community. It marked our journey from a platform of design critics to a well-organized community with product offerings poised to resolve continental challenges.
Here are some awesome highlights from NGDX 2021:
– Creative panel sessions: Panelist sessions featuring top names in the design industry from NGD’s poster girl Juliet Godwin to Bolanle Banwo Osadalo of Geneza design school.
– Creative challenge: Virtual tigers unleashed as photo manipulators went head to head in design combats.
– A Product unveiled: Youdesign is revealed to the community for the first time and its earning potential as well as future hopes for creatives in Africa were disclosed.
Since NGDX, we’ve gone on to win collaborations with financial institutions, health institutions, and partnered with designers for high-end master classes.
As a cap to our activities, Team NGD is flying high this year with its creative conference promising a showdown of activities to dwarf everything so far and promises a session so impactful we are a bit worried if the halls can contain the shouts.
It’s Huge, It’s Real, and It’s Coming
NGD is well-versed in practicality and incorporates its understanding of what designers require into its programs. This innate understanding of needs is the driver behind Designathon.
What is it: The Designathon solves the crucial need of job engagement for graphics designers. … The community is partnering with design agencies, companies and stakeholders to offer on the spot employment to winners of the design challenge held the same day as the creative conference.
What this means: participants have the added opportunity to not only imbibe life-changing concepts but grab jobs by participating in ongoing competitions that are completely free. Representatives of notable agencies are on standby and get to select winners from the competition.
Who can participate: Anyone present at the NGDX Liftoff Conference is allowed to participate. There are no pro or beginner challenges here; the only criteria for participating is willpower.
Upon being selected, contestants can regard themselves as staff of respective agencies and immediately end their job spells or get to work with dream agencies. It’s an opportunity you don’t want to miss for its life-changing benefits.
Beating Unemployment and Developing Creative Skills
Africa’s most populous country with more than 200 million people, has faced high unemployment for decades as population growth outpaces economic growth continually. Record debt, sluggish growth and poor infrastructure have held back the distribution of wealth in Africa’s biggest economy where tens of millions are employed in the largely unregulated informal sectors.
Jobberman posits the creative industry as the second largest employer of labor in Nigeria with the potential to add 5 trillion naira to the country’s GDP. The designathon is one of such initiatives from the creative industry held to ensure deserving talents are absorbed by establishments already converting creativity into marketable products.
Our aim is to push creatives desirous of engagements to agencies not for internship purposes but real life job use and have their talents develop into sources of earning potential for themselves and eventually the country.
The designathon is coming, it’s not a pipe dream but draws closer with each passing day, who will go home with a job in their pocket? We hope it’s you! See you there
