That's how Cape Town's Design Indaba is being billed on its 10th anniversary. It's hard for designers to argue when titans like Milton Glaser and Wally Olins star on the opening day. The program is packed with famous designer names; Neville Brody, Hella Jongerius, Jasper Morrison, Cameron Sinclair; all under the same roof for 3 days.

Core's Day 1 highlight was an amiable engineer/sculptor from Port Elizabeth South Africa. Keith Helfet is the ex-chief designer of Jaguar Cars. He discussed the revenue Jaguar got from the emotional appeal of its concept cars. Helfet's slides featured cars like the breathtaking XK220 which snaffled blank cheques from punters at its launch in 1988, despite being a concept with no price tag. People literally handed over millions of dollars in cash for a beautiful shape. Some return on investment!

Helfet says: "The ultimate prize is to design an object of desire". And to gather some blank cheques in the process...