Open – Design Week Frankfurt RheinMain

Echt jetzt. Ein Abend für das Analoge

By the year 2026, digital perfection has become a burden. We glide across smooth, AI-generated surfaces that no longer offer any friction. Yet humans remain beings of resonance: we need haptics, the scent of a room, and the crackle in the air to truly feel ourselves. This event by WDC and brand eins seeks personal encounters — not for their efficiency, but because their unpredictability tears us away from digital paralysis.

We have mastered the perfect User Experience while the Human Experience is becoming increasingly wooden. We swipe people to the left and grow isolated in our home offices. While the digital sphere delivers only fragments of opinion, at Frankfurt's Massif E, we encounter real biographies. That is where democracy begins — where you cannot simply click the other person away.

The we-feeling is a neurological reaction to shared time and space. But why is the real deal sometimes so difficult for us? Because we have learned to love the comfort of frictionlessness. Every real encounter carries the risk of embarrassment or contradiction. This event breaks the promise of digital retreat and embraces the beautiful struggle of the analogue. For one evening, we celebrate the unfiltered, the unplanned, and the genuine conversation that has no delete button.

Through three live interviews, the journalism of brand eins comes to life on stage.

We welcome three outspoken guests with distinctive perspectives.

• Ronja Trischler is a sociologist and researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund, where she focuses on technology, media, and work. Her research explores how digital technologies are transforming creative processes and working environments.
• Florian Jöckel is a cultural entrepreneur and founder of Massif Central in Frankfurt. Through his projects, he develops new uses for vacant buildings and creates spaces for culture, community, and urban development.
• Henning Beck is a neuroscientist, biochemist, and author of the bestselling book Besser denken (Think Better). He explores creativity, innovation, and the potential of the human brain, making complex scientific insights accessible to a broad audience.

The evening will be moderated by Margitta Schulze Lohoff and Daniel Ramm of brand eins.

brand eins is an idea — the idea that business can be done better; that it can conserve resources, provide people with meaningful work, and be successful for those very reasons. We have been working on this idea for more than 25 years. Today, we present it through magazines and podcasts, at events, and in corporate publishing media, and it continues to find more and more friends and allies.