I’m sure you know that Cape Town is has been named as World Design Capital in 2014. Hooray!

All year long, there will be official projects and seminars and whatnot going on in the city (read about them here), and although Skinny laMinx isn’t involved in any of the official WDC2014 projects, we still want to muck in. This is how we’re going to do it:

OWN IT

We’re super-proud that our city has been chosen to fly the global Design flag for a whole year, and we’re planning to bask in some of that glory!

All year long, Skinny laMinx will be trumpeting #WDC2014 on this blog, on Twitter, and on Instagram. We’ll also be ‘cross-pollinating’ with other designers (we started already!), with a view to strengthening our creative community.

Essentially, really, we just want to tell the world how just damn fab Cape Town design really is.

PAINT IT

Yellow is the WDC2014 colour. More specifically, it is Pantone 109C, and to celebrate, Plascon has created a special colour called Cape Town Yellow. 

We started the year with a yellow 2014 shop window display, and I was so excited to see Robert Sherwood Design, just down the road on Bree Street, painting his front door yellow at the weekend. Even their flowers are yellow!

Who’ll be next?  If you don’t have a shop, get a pair of yellow boots, buy your dog a yellow collar, or plant yellow daisies in your window box, like Robert Sherwood did.

Let’s make yellow it the Cape Town colour in 2014, so that every time someone sees it, no matter where, they think “Yeah. World Design Capital 2014!

WORK IT

The year has started with a stream of top international design magazines visiting my shop, and many of them have expressed amazement that apart from Skinny laMinx, they didn’t spot any other shop window celebrating WDC2014. As a result, the Skinny laMinx shop front has been photographed for WDC2014 stories that will be published far and wide.

So, sure, I’m excited about the honour, but I’m a business dame, and I want Skinny laMinx to get max exposure from all this WDC2014 excitement, and that my shop and my business is noticed all year long by Design people coming to the city.

It’s just good, strategic PR and Marketing, right?

Come on Cape Town. What’s the point of playing it cool? There’s certainly no point in waiting for someone else to organise something before you get involved, and 2014 will be over before we know it.

Let’s own this thing, paint this town yellow, make it work for us, and let’s see what happens!