The original no-agenda annual lunch for the creative industry is back and ready to knock your socks off after a year in hibernation.
Now, over a quarter of a century old, Design Podge has grown arms and legs and other interesting bits, but the recipe has remained the same. Friends, rivals, icons and even people given posh acronyms by HRH the Queen take time out to meet old friends, make new ones, exchange stories and indulge in good food and lots of wine.
We’re not sure if it’s the world’s longest lunch, but its most certainly the most fun, and after a year like we’ve all experienced, we can’t wait to get everyone together again for a very overdue knees up.
And this year more than ever, we want to say a huge thanks to our incredible partners. They’re generous support enables us to do what we do best and bring everyone together. Podge just wouldn’t be Podge without them.
Supported by:
In the Summer of 94, the likes of Marcelo Minale, Aziz Cami, Brian Webb, Erik Spiekermann and Alan Fletcher were among the 30 original guests that made up the first Podge Lunch. The reason for the gathering? The UK was in one of the worst recessions it had faced and the who’s who of the design industry, who back then were all clients of my typesetting firm APT, asked me to organise a gathering on neutral turf that would allow them to chew the fat.
Working together. Opening up. Sharing knowledge and dropping the ego’s at the door. Coming together as peers, all with one common goal. To ensure they were all still standing on the other side as individuals and as an industry. And to have a ruddy good afternoon too.
26 years has flown by and the lunch has grown every year. This year we are faced yet again with another blow to the industry and that of many others. This time coming in the form of a virus. One that has taken us all by surprise and made us realise the important things. The human things.
So for this year’s Podge. The 26th. We have decided to take it back to where it all began. We have shrunk it down to its more intimate former self. Not quite 30, but 100 of the industries finest. The creative has also been given a 1994 makeover of sorts, harking back to the hot metal days where founder Phil started his career and the reason Podge exists.
We don’t know what will lie at the end of the corona virus journey. It will impact everyone differently. But one thing has become clear during this unprecedented summer. It’s the people that matter.
We hope you will join us to celebrate in true podge style, amongst friends and peers, enjoying a long lunch in great company, raising a toast to the ‘new normal’.
The Coronavirus scuppered our plans for a Summer Podge, so we have changed the date accordingly and will now be celebrating with 100 of the industries finest, this Autumn.
This year we knew a change was needed. We wanted to have a more intimate gathering, somewhere that felt like home. A place to escape and reset. The Groucho Club has been the creative industries watering hole since it opened in 1985. Now, with a new space to fit us Podgers, there was no better place to kickstart the next quarter of a century.
Groucho Club
45 Dean Street
London, W1D 4QB
City of Westminster
Podge just wouldn’t be Podge without the support and friendship of some truly fantastic people. Everything that makes Podge what it is, is about human beings and organisations going the extra mile, having fun, and supporting the creative industry.
Thanks to all of our friends, new and old, for keeping it Podgey!
Which all sums up Podge perfectly.