TRAVERSE CITY — Traverse City Design Week is back after seeing success during its inaugural year in 2025.
Traverse City Design Week is the brainchild of co-founder Dana Lacuesta, owner of Dana Grace Interiors, and co-founder Jessica Kooiman Parker of Kooiman Pavão Cultural and Visual Art Curator at The Alluvion. Two forces of nature in the Grand Traverse arts and culture scene, the pair founded this with one idea in mind: to connect designers with the people living through them.
“Traverse City Design Week isn’t just for designers,” Lacuesta said. “We want more people in the community to understand that Design Week is for everybody. It’s about design, and it’s also welcoming the community into the design world to get a glimpse of these talented designers’ processes, learning from them, and sharing their thoughts with them.”
Supported by Bayview Flooring, The Alluvion, and Britten, three organizations that arguably also understand the essentiality of design within their products and studios, it’s due to the community coming together that this event is able to happen.
The 2026 event theme, “Design Outside The Box,” is meant to inspire participants to go wild with where their ideas might take them. The name turned into a double-reference, as alongside a $25,000 grant from the MEDC office, they received a shipping container with one instruction, to use it as an activation for the week-long event and the days leading up to it. It’ll be set up free for public access, near Eighth and Wellington.
“We’re calling it the Vox Box; meaning voice, so it’s a voice box where people can come in and voice their opinions or their problems and work with a designer on a solution or just brainstorm together and have great conversations,” Lacuesta said.
With almost 20 designers this year, Lacuesta, Kooiman-Parker, and the rest of the volunteers involved are excited to see what will come of this year’s celebration.
“We’re joining ranks with a lot of other amazing festivals around town like the Food & Wine Festival, the Mural Festival, so many different wonderful things are happening along these lines and we’re so excited to be a part of it. But if we’re talking about growth and people moving to Traverse City, I think the most important thing that Design Week can do is to engage the community with the people, the designers, who are deciding the culture of Traverse City, who are working on things like city planning, who are creating festivals, who are creating products that we use and interact with every day, who are designing logos and labels, who are the architects designing neighborhoods,” Lacuesta said.
“There are so many ways that design touches the culture of the community, and our goal is to give the community — people who are not designers — a chance to talk to those who are,” she said. “And if we all have a conversation, then we can influence the culture of Traverse City and its growth in a positive way.”
As Lacuesta explains, design isn’t just about visual objects people can hold appreciation for; it touches every part of life, from grocery store products to roadmaps across counties.
“Design is art that solves a problem. That’s what separates it from visual arts. Visual arts are often made for the sake of itself, because of something inside the artist or just because something is beautiful,” she said. “Design is really problem-solving for a client, for a brief, and we use creative means to do that.”
The weeklong event will kick off on Sunday, Oct. 4, ending with a culminating celebration on Saturday, Oct. 10.
The closing ceremony will be hosted at The Alluvion and include a cocktail hour and viewing of the 2026 TCDW Regional Designer Showcase, as well as a live presentation hosted by SkyeLea and featuring keynote duo Geoggrey Holstad and MIcah Middaugh alongside singer-songwriters Ruby Amanfu and Sam Ashworth. General admission tickets are $30.
More details, event information and links for tickets can be found on the Traverse City Design Week website at www.tcdesignweek.com.