Designing Multimedia Experiences Day in Downtown San Diego
Designing Multimedia Experiences Day in Downtown San Diego
Welcome to SDDW Multimedia Design Day, a full-day exploration of how we design experiences across motion, sound, image, interaction, storytelling, and emerging technology.
We are no longer simply consuming media. We are living inside it.
Multimedia Day brings together designers, artists, filmmakers, technologists, creators, studios, and curious minds for an afternoon and evening of workshops, conversations, screenings, installations, networking, food, music, and immersive experiences.
Designed as one evolving experience rather than a traditional conference, the day moves from learning and experimentation into connection, discovery, and celebration. Guests are welcome to attend individual sessions or stay for the full experience.
Free admission is intentional. Access to creative community, professional development, and new ideas should be open to everyone.
Explore the lineup below and build your own Multimedia Day.
What to Expect
Multimedia Day is intentionally designed as a flexible, evolving experience. Throughout the day you can:
- Attend panels, workshops, and screenings
- Experiment with emerging creative technologies
- Meet designers, artists, filmmakers, creators, and technologists
- Explore interactive and multimedia work
- Record content at the Bossity Podcast Pop-Up
- Grab food and drinks
- Experience large-scale projections
- Network during the Multimedia Mixer
- End Design Week with a DJ silent disco
Whether you work professionally in multimedia or are simply curious about where creative technology and storytelling are headed next, you are welcome.
Event Details
🗓️ Sunday, September 20, 2026
🕑 1:00 PM–9:00 PM
📍 401 B Street, Downtown San Diego
🎟️ Free Admission
Programming curated by Nova Renay, Multimedia Day Lead + Design Forward Alliance Board Member.
REGISTER FOR FREE
Multimedia Day Schedule
Register once, have access to the following FREE programming:
Session Details
All Programming Located at: 401 B Street, 14th Floor
Required: Must show registration QR code to enter building
1:00 PM | Multimedia Day Welcome
Welcome to Multimedia Day. Get oriented, meet the creative community, and explore the programming happening throughout the afternoon and evening.
1:00 – 6:00 PM | Bossity Content + Podcast Pop-Up
Where: Breakout Room B
Host: Bossity, Nova Renay
Step into the Bossity pop-up studio for short-form conversations, interviews, creator content, and recorded discussions with members of San Diego’s creative community.
Throughout the afternoon, artists, designers, entrepreneurs, and Multimedia Day participants will share ideas, projects, perspectives, and stories from across Design Week.
1:00 – 2:00PM | The Vessel: An Activation for Designing the Inner Conditions for Creativity
Where: 401 B St, Breakout Room A
Host: Leila Astarabadi
A multi-sensory workshop exploring how attention, perception, and the nervous system shape creativity. Through sound, breath, movement, embodied awareness, and guided subconscious experience, participants shift from analytical thinking into a more receptive creative state.
Designed for creatives, designers, and builders, the session offers practical tools for cultivating inspiration, innovation, and authentic expression.
1:00 – 2:00 PM | Visualize Your Future: San Diego Office of Anticipation Workshop
Where: Workshop Room
Host: Keil Eggers
A participatory futures-thinking workshop exploring how we can move from the challenges of today toward the futures we want to create. Participants will work backward from imagined outcomes, identify possible pathways forward, and explore how emerging tools and immersive technologies can help us visualize possible futures.
1:30 – 3:00 PM | Film Screenings + Q&As
Where: Stage
Featuring: Meditations of the Deep Sea and Threshold
A rotating showcase of film, moving image, experimental storytelling, and immersive media presented throughout Multimedia Day. Wireless headphones allow guests to step into screenings while other programming continues around them.
3:00 – 4:00 PM | TouchDesigner Workshop
Where: Workshop Room
Host: Benjamin Guerrette, Ten Six Pines
An introduction to TouchDesigner, the node-based visual development platform used for interactive installations, live visuals, projection mapping, performances, and immersive experiences.
Participants will explore the fundamentals of TouchDesigner while creating an audio-reactive visual experience of their own.
Beginners are welcome. Attendees are encouraged to bring a laptop and headphones.
4:00 – 5:00 PM | From Craft to Company: The Creator Economy Panel
Where: Stage
Moderator: Nova Renay
What happens when creative work becomes a business?
This conversation brings together creators, studio founders, agency leaders, and entrepreneurs to discuss the transition from making the work to building the systems, teams, audiences, and businesses that allow creative careers to grow.
Topics include creative entrepreneurship, content production, personal branding, scaling a studio, building teams, finding clients, and navigating the evolving creator economy.
5:00 – 6:00 PM | Designing Moments That Move People: Experiential Design Panel
Where: Stage
Moderator: Catherine Eng
Experience design exists where physical space, technology, storytelling, sound, visuals, and human behavior meet.
This interdisciplinary conversation explores how designers create moments people don’t simply see — but feel, navigate, remember, and participate in.
Panelists working across immersive media, cultural experiences, interactive technology, performance, and spatial design will discuss how memorable experiences are imagined and built.
6:00 – 8:00 PM | Design Week Closing Party: DJ Silent Disco + Multimedia Mixer
Location: Stage
Host: Design Forward Alliance
Multimedia Day shifts from programmed sessions into an open-format mixer bringing together designers, artists, technologists, filmmakers, creators, studios, and guests from across San Diego Design Week.
We are closing out Multimedia Day, and San Diego Design Week, with music, projections, creative community, and a DJ silent disco overlooking Downtown San Diego.
Wireless headphones transform the space into a shared audiovisual experience and bring the week to an energetic close.
8:00 – 9:00 PM | Human Made: A Projection Exhibition
Location: Outside 401B at California Theatre
Host: OurWorlds
Human Made transforms Multimedia Day into an open-air gallery of large-scale projected artwork celebrating the enduring human impulse to imagine, create, and shape the world around us.
Selected works from designers, artists, architects, students, studios, and creative technologists explore what it means to create in an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.
Expect work spanning typography, illustration, motion, architecture, AI, industrial design, fashion, immersive media, and experimental visual storytelling.
Come for one program or stay through the final track.
REGISTER FOR FREE
Event Details
🗓️ Sunday, September 20, 2026
🕑 1:00 PM–9:00 PM
📍 401 B Street, Downtown San Diego
🎟️ Free Admission
Programming curated by Nova Renay, Multimedia Day Lead + Design Forward Alliance Board Member.
Special Thanks to Our Organizing Partners
Design Forward Alliance
San Diego Design Week
The Downtown San Diego Partnership
Bossity
Show Gear Productions
About the Host
Design Forward Alliance
Design Forward Alliance is a San Diego-based nonprofit that leverages the power of design to drive social impact. The organization brings together industry leaders and academics to promote human-centered design as a tool for addressing community challenges, fostering collaboration across disciplines to strengthen the region’s innovation economy. Point of contact: Nova Renay (nova@designforwardsd.com).
