Ravi Naidoo’s dream of putting South African design on the map, and talking to the world, has happened.This is evident in the way the Design Indaba has attracted a solid core of people who now come every year, but over the years it has continued to attract a whole new crowd every time. The event continues to draw a wide range of people across design disciplines, which stretch broader than just advertising and graphic design. The programme this year covered fashion, products, furniture, books, photography, new media, cartoons, interior design (cars, homes, restaurants, shops, hotels), logos, posters and campaigns (for corporations and for causes). Its easy ability to span the time gap between handmade books (Irma Boom from The Netherlands) and digitised wizardy (Simon Sankarayya from London) without missing a beat.Organiser Naidoo has listened to his critics who say the Indaba is elitist and expensive and made strenuous efforts to involve those outside the formal economy. This year the British Council sponsored a workshop with Durban designer Garth Walker and aspirant township designers producing delightful conference bags based on well-known South African brands. They also sponsored 50 students to attend the conference. And the number of educators attending and participating was impressive. A Create SA/Mapppseta discussion on the side to talk about learnerships for those outside the formal education structures got quite a turnout.The Indaba has achieved a sense of what it does in the world. While it is primarily a vehicle to inspire (and the programme is deliberately packed with extraordinary people showcasing their wonderful work) it is also about the introspection that asks what designers can do to make the world a better place.Along with clever products and slick campaigns, every Indaba gives its attendees a healthy dose of conscience. So this year we had Sujata Keshavan from Bangalore giving us an amazing case study of brokering a relationship between one of her country’s new Silicon Valley-type industries and the local home for the cerebral-palsied, resulting in the design of their new office block. We heard typographer Neville Brody reflecting on the unhealthy mental anxiety of the post-September 11 world. Stefan Sagmeister from New York, who made his name doing cool covers for the Rolling Stones, now throwing himself into a campaign to move United States defence-budget money into social programmes. Writer Richard Rodgrigues asked deeply philosophical questions about the world’s mixed-race children, who have no labels (‘black†and ‘white†being almost useless descriptors). And Sir Terence Conran, bursting into tears at the end of his talk, asking the audience to indicate by a show of hands whether he could take a message back to the British government about our opposition to the war on Iraq.When Sabine Zemelka, who designs interiors for BMW cars, finished her slick and beautiful presentation, two members of the audience jumped up to say: ‘Do you realise that cars are actually killing machines?†and ‘Here in South Africa we call these cars German takeaways because they are so desirable for hijackingâ€. In other words, the industry that produces desire can also produce death. Finaly, local participants succumbed to South African self-consciousness and, if locals could be criticised for anything, it was the fact that there were still those who felt the need to point out to visitors how professional everything here is.Possibly, in years to come, when we have achieved our sense of design identity — and the dignity that goes with that — partcipants at forums like these will stop talking about being South African and just be.