Urbis Designday is an accessible, entertaining design event for Auckland city.

I guess it’s easy to forget that everyday items were designed at some stage. Look at the closest table to you. The closest chair, lampshade, set of drawers. Someone or a team designed that to be the way it is. Designday gets these designed items into the radar of both public and professionals. Admire the things in the showrooms, the creative collaborations between designers in different industries and interact with anything they let you touch. This year’s Designday featured lots of painted and interactive elements.

Here are some of the designery sights from the day:

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The Kohler showroom with Resene and Art Associates had interactive elements such as a painting wall using your choice of Resene testpots, throwing games (bathtubes, paintbuckets and balls) as well as painted artworks on live models.

The “Identify Your Design” flowchart painted on a huge wall at Essenze in Parnell was an interesting way to figure out your style.

The Photo Booth Fun with dress up boxes at Mini Garage and Urbis Designday HQ proved to be a hit.

Painted models at Spaziocasa showroom livened up the space. Some were displayed in the floor to ceiling windows and caused quite a stirred I particularly liked the man painted in different blocks of marble, the beautifully painted black and white model who was a portrait of the tile artwork she was posed in front of, and a colourful Urbis Designday themed model complete with glitter. Another beautifully painted red and white floral model was painted in front of a matching wall at Bo Concept store.

The general gist of the days go with the flow, interact, be delighted, ask questions and enjoy. Looking forward to 2013’s Design day already.

More information about this year’s event can be found at the Urbis Magazine website here.