The State of Design Festival in Victoria is on its way, so Desktop snuggled up in bed last night with the Festival Guide and highlighted our top picks to share with you.

Look.Stop.Shop.
Wednesday 14 – Sunday 25 July, 2010
Look.Stop.Shop is a design-led walk through Melbourne’s City Centre. A selected group of retailers have created special window displays and in-store installations exploring sustainable design.

Look.Stop.Shop includes a broad field of traders from department stores to tiny boutiques, vertical retailers, designer-owned and operated spaces and pop-up shops for fashion, books, furniture, flowers and objects. With many installations located in street-level stores, this diverse retail landscape provides 24 hour viewing. Look.Stop.Shop is a round-the-clock, program using design to promote a safe, vibrant and inclusive city as it moves from day to night.

Melbourne Open House
Saturday 24 & Sunday 25 July, 2010
Melbourne Open House (MOH) is a free event giving Melbournians and visitors to the city a rare opportunity to discover the often hidden wealth of design, architectural, engineering and historic ‘gems’ nestled around the city.

Following a record 50,000+ visits to 32 buildings in its second year, the 2010 Melbourne Open House promises even more fascinating sites and will open a much wider range of buildings over two days.

The Design Fete
Saturday 17 July, 2010
A contemporary take on the traditional fete – an extraordinary array of creative, fun, engaging and imaginative events and games by leading as well as up-and-coming Melbourne designers.

Audio Design Museum
Wednesday 14 July 2010 onwards
Goodbye gallery. Hello city. No space could ever be big enough to capture the creativity of a city: the Audio Design Museum turns Melbourne into a living showcase of activity. The ADM allows a look – and listen – behind the scenes via the voices of designers, architects and others who have shaped the development of design where they live.

The Gertrude Street Projection Festival
Friday 9 – Sunday 18 July, 2010
The 2010 Gertrude Street Projection Festival turns Gertrude Street into a free walk, ride, drive and tram through outdoor projection gallery.
Every night animations, stills, and digital art in all its forms are projected onto the pavements, buildings and walls of Gertrude Street.

Swinburne Design Workshops
Monday 19, Wednesday 21 & Friday 23 July, 2010
Swinburne Design Workshops are a week long event, comprising three one-day events. Developed by Communication Design – 003 design studio, each workshop encompasses mark making, stencil production, collage, typography and stop frame animation and is aimed at year 11-12 school students. These aspiring designers can also see an exhibition of current Swinburne student work.

QRioCity
Wednesday 14 July – Sunday 25 July, 2010
Scavenger hunt in Melbourne! Find the coded objects hidden in the city and decode them with your mobile phone. Discover links to the virtual world and hidden clues in the real world. What will you find? Where will the trail lead you? How will this new knowledge change the way you understand the city?

Design:Made:Trade
Thursday 15 – Sunday 18 July, 2010
Design:Made:Trade is a diverse and inspiring trade exhibition space of over sixty 3×3 metre VISY cardboard booths, including some of Australia’s leading furniture, fashion and industrial design brands.

Character 6 – Typeface
Saturday 24 July, 2010
In 2007 Character organised the screening of the international hit Helvetica at ACMI, attracting over 500 people. Building on this event, Character continues to screen films about type, design and the social connections that lie between these fields and the broader community.

3D Stencil Project
19 – 25 July, 2010
Your average two-dimensional stencil artist goes out on the street with a cardboard stencil and a can of spray paint. With the 3D Stencil, Trent Jansen goes to the street with a small mould and a can of ecologically inert expansion foam. The mould is attached to a wall and filled with expansion foam. Once the foam has cured the mould is removed, leaving a small form on the wall.

Business & Trade:

Making the Invisible Visible
Thursday 22 July, 2010
If you don’t have a digital strategy then it is almost impossible to have any control of how your brand is being discussed and distributed by the public or competitors. Entire cities, organizations, companies large and small develop comprehensive digital strategies to ensure they have at least a guiding hand in how their work is engaged with digitally.

Design Victoria: Get Funded
Thursday 15 July
Grant funding is out there – you just need to know about it.
Applying for grant funding can be daunting and quite often seem fruitless- after all you are spending the hours that you could be designing, working on a grant application that may get you nowhere.

Design Victoria: Get Noticed – It’s Called PR Darling!
Friday 16 July
As designers we are often so caught up in the making of objects that we forget to market them properly. This seminar looks at some of the strategies and tactics that designers can employ to put themselves out there.

Design Victoria: Hello World – Exporting Design
Friday 16 July
Could you be a bigger fish in a bigger pond? As the world becomes more connected, designers have a unique opportunity to explore offshore markets- but what is the best road to take when you’re new in town?

For the Kids:

My Patch, My Biomorphic City
Sunday 18 July, 2010
Kids, families and friends will be given the opportunity to construct their own, ideal “Patch” of a city, during a fun-filled, educational workshop. Kids will make their “Patch” from a wide range of raw and recycled materials with the help of designers, architects and consultants. As the day progresses, “Patches” will be pieced together to form a vibrant, mini metropolis of an imagined Melbourne.

Paper Plane Academy
Saturday 17 & Sunday 18 July, 2010
The Paper Plane Academy is the chance for all budding pilots, both young and young at heart, to don their goggles and prepare for take off!
This hands on workshop explores paper plane design and provides the unique opportunity to test out your creations in the ‘Aerial Playground’ – a purpose built obstacle course in the sky.