By Erica Keppel

2011 is in full swing, and the team at Artisan are getting very excited about this Year’s Creative Industry Calendar. So you don’t miss out on any of this year’s coolest events, we’ve thrown together a brief schedule of those not to be missed across Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales!

As the year moves on, more and more industry events – great and small pop up, here are just a few of those to add to your to do list.

The Melbourne Design Awards kick off for the very first time on February the 17th here in Melbourne. This event is the very first and is bought to Victoria by The Thinking Company in Partnership with The Design Institute of Australia. The aim is to celebrate and recognise excellence over a broad range of cross disciplinary categories. www.melbournedesignawards.com.au

May (1 - 5th) brings us agIdeas International Design week. This is one of the largest and most heavily recognised international design festivals worldwide – and has been a hot spot on the Artisan Calendar for years now. This is really a fabulous event, which started twenty years ago by Melbourne’s own Ken Cato. As a proud sponsor, our team love getting behind and attending this event – which features some 40 speakers from around the world enlightening a massive audience on they’re individual creative feats; as well as a host of Design studio workshops and studio evenings, and the finale 'Gala Dinner'. This year’s speakers are set to be just as inspiring as previous years – with Creative visionaries such as UK’s ‘Sanky’, Thinktank’s Scott Mellor and Photographer Stephen Dupont. Jump online to read more about this year’s line up www.agideas.net.

Semi Permanent begins it’s 9th Annual Australian tour in Sydney on the 13th and 14th of May. This Worldwide conference covers all disciplines of Design from Illustration, Web Design through to visual effects and Architecture. So far the conference has hosted 26 events in 5 countries, with 164 speakers and over 42,000 attendees. This year Semi Permanent will be celebrating it’s launch in Hong Kong! The conference will be here in Melbourne on the 23rd and 24th of September, and in Brisbane on the 5th of August. To find out more, jump on the official site www.semipermanent.com.

The Adobe Design Achievement Awards in June aim to recognise excellence from both students and faculties in the collaboration of industry software and creative spark. The awards elicit the very crème de la crème of the Industry’s up and coming – the students. Showcasing Digital Film Makers, Web Developers and Photographers to name a few categories – this is a wonderful celebration of fresh talent www.adobeawards.com.

June also brings us Victorians’ a community run event The Gertrude Street Projection Festival. Ten evenings of Creative Projection Installments on Fitzroy’s Gertrude Street, will run between the 22nd and 30th. Entries are open for those who are keen to work they’re magic with visual presentation via projection.

Melbourne’s State of Design Festival provides an excellent opportunity to learn about the many ways in which Design contributes to and drives our local and national economy and how it functions sustainably in the community through a series of engaging workshops and seminars between the 20th – 31st July www.stateofdesign.com.au.

For Sydney Siders, The Sydney Design Festival will provide a showcase of professional as well as up and coming multi disciplinary Design talent between the 1st and 16th of August. www.sydneydesign.com.au.

This almost brings us right into summer party time. With many more events to add to the mix, we are set for a wonderful year of celebration and excellence in the Creative Industry. Be sure to make the most of these wonderful resources - as well as keeping Artisan up to date with any events you would like us to promote Artisan Press Room!