Events for designers & creatives

This calendar lists in-person and online design and arts events for graphic designers, illustrators, and visual creatives. We built this to help strengthen our community and reduce gatekeeping and barriers to connection. All events are based in Toronto.

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Recently Added

Trace Monotypes on Washi with Helen McCusker

The Japanese Paper Place

Hands-On Printmaking Workshop

DesignTO Launch Party 2026

Art Battle Toronto

Art Battle International

TORONTO THEORY #2: Toronto Joy, Toronto Greatness

IRID (Institute for Relational Intelligence in Design)

Research Roundtable: Toronto

Featured Events

Dog Draw XI: New Year, New Ball

Northern Contemporary

This night of life-drawing has a twist - the models are dogs! Besides the cuteness factor (which will be high) you get to practice a whole different set of textures and anatomy. We’ll have a variety of different dogs and pose styles - you get a night unlike any other and you’ll go home with a stack of personal masterpieces to frame and display.

Design Evenings TO: Building Design Teams That Scale

Lenny Laurier explores how design teams can scale impact while balancing user experience, technical capabilities, and cross-functional alignment. Attendees will gain practical frameworks for hiring and coaching designers, growing culture, and making design a strategic driver across products and organizations of any size.

Happening Today & Ongoing Exhibitions

Meet Your Maker

Meet Your Maker

Harbourfront Center

Meet Your Maker invites you into the beating heart of contemporary craft and design — a space where tradition meets bold reinvention, and where the maker’s hand is ever-present. Through the exceptional work of current Artists-in-Residence at the Craft & Design Studio at Harbourfront Centre, this exhibition explores the enduring relevance of skilled making in

Art/Wear: Sneakers x Artists

Art/Wear: Sneakers x Artists

Bata Shoe Museum

Many artists are increasingly using sneakers in conceptually rich ways to challenge and redefine conventional artistic boundaries. By manipulating the familiar form of sneakers, these artists create provocative works that explore themes of consumerism, personal expression, and societal expectations.

Inner Structures — Outer Rhythms

Inner Structures — Outer Rhythms

Aga Khan Museum

Inner Structures – Outer Rhythms offers a glimpse into the dynamic graphic design scene of Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA), showcasing how innovative Arabic and Persian typography contribute to global visual culture.

Upcoming Events

Reflective Tiles: Metal Embossing Workshop

Reflective Tiles: Metal Embossing Workshop

Aga Khan Museum

Explore the art of metal embossing in this hands-on workshop. Discover the basics of this technique, draw inspiration from the unique patterns in our Museum Collections, and experiment with your own designs. By the end of the workshop, you will create a beautifully embossed metal tile to take home. Suitable for all skill levels.

Letterpress Posters: Resolutions!

Letterpress Posters: Resolutions!

Flycatcher Press

Mix pattern and type and see what amazing design can be generated from these two relief processes. In this day-long course you'll learn about the history of wood and metal typesetting in letterpress printing and how to design and print a successful letterpress poster.

Introduction to Calligraphy Workshop

Introduction to Calligraphy Workshop

Aga Khan Museum

Explore the timeless art of calligraphy in this hands-on workshop, where our Museum Educators guide you through the graceful strokes, expressive forms, and creative possibilities behind this centuries-old practice.

Letterpress Club at Open Studio

Letterpress Club at Open Studio

Join us for Letterpress Club as we gather around the Vandercook 4T and make some text-based prints around a different theme each month.

Type Design @ The Combine

Type Design @ The Combine

Manic Type x The Combine

In this in-depth 8 week (42 hour) course, we'll be walking you through the process of designing a typeface with the Glyphs app. Participants will immerse themselves in letterforms, exploring calligraphy and sketching, concept development and the type design process.

Print Studio 101

Print Studio 101

inPrint Collective

Perfect for beginners or experienced printmakers looking to brush up, this course introduces the atelier experience to students. A range of both traditional print media and alternative methods will be explored in these 5 weeks, including the photo emulsion screen print method, cyanotype and relief printing with a press.

Design Evenings TO: Building Design Teams That Scale

Design Evenings TO: Building Design Teams That Scale

Lenny Laurier explores how design teams can scale impact while balancing user experience, technical capabilities, and cross-functional alignment. Attendees will gain practical frameworks for hiring and coaching designers, growing culture, and making design a strategic driver across products and organizations of any size.

Collage Night

Collage Night

Issues Magazine Shop

Create, cut and paste pieces with a myriad of materials — from contemporary to vintage, and everything in between! — to create memory. Craft a blessing, build a vision board or remix a love poem for things to come. The experience is the joy! Invite your curiosity out on date, or bring a kid, parent, partner or pal: collage is for everyone.

Intro to Digital Marketing

Intro to Digital Marketing

Join us in Toronto to discover how Digital Marketing connects brands with audiences in measurable ways. In this event, you’ll explore how marketers plan, execute, and measure campaigns that drive growth. This session will give you a clear understanding of today’s digital marketing landscape.

Intro to Product Design

Intro to Product Design

Join us in Toronto to discuss how Product Designers are shaping the world’s most innovative digital products by combining creativity, research, and technical skills to solve real user problems. In this event, you’ll explore what Product Design is, the skills modern designers use, and how design teams collaborate with product and engineering to bring ideas to

Intro to UX Design

Intro to UX Design

Join us in Toronto to discuss how UX Designers are shaping the world’s most innovative digital products by combining creativity, research, and technical skills to solve real user problems. In this event, you’ll explore what UX Design is, the skills modern designers use, and how design teams collaborate with product and engineering to bring ideas to life.

TORONTO THEORY #2: Toronto Joy, Toronto Greatness

TORONTO THEORY #2: Toronto Joy, Toronto Greatness

IRID (Institute for Relational Intelligence in Design)

This series takes seriously the idea that in order to create wonderful things—be them products, organizations, political movements, forms of art—we must first begin by understanding where we live, and how this place works. How can we learn to "build with local materials" when it comes to culture itself?

Marketing Evenings TO: Inside Team Canada’s 2026 Olympic Brand

Join Kelley Tessier, Senior Director of Brand and Digital Marketing at the Canadian Olympic Committee, for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at how Team Canada is redefining what it means to represent a nation on the world stage.

Art Battle Toronto

Art Battle Toronto

Art Battle International

Join us for an epic art showdown! Watch as masterful artists craft stunning masterpieces in just 20 minutes per round. Be part of the decision-making process and vote for the ultimate champion. And don't miss your chance to own a piece of the action with the silent auction of all original works!

The UXR Morning Roast

The UXR Morning Roast

Start your morning the best way possible: with a cup of coffee, great people, and an easy way to connect with other researchers in your city. We’re roasting beans, not people, before the workday begins!

DesignTO Launch Party 2026

DesignTO Launch Party 2026

Join us for the official 2026 DesignTO Launch Party at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, as we kick off our 16th Festival and celebrate DesignTO’s legacy of showcasing and sparking vital conversations about design’s role in shaping a better world.

Research Roundtable: Toronto

Research Roundtable: Toronto

Designed for seasoned IC researchers and those running research teams, Research Roundtable is part of an apply-only, five-part series of events. With small-group sessions, AMAs, and city-specific hosts Dave Chen (1Password) and Eve Cuthbertson (Loblaw Digital), these conversations are meant to surface the challenges and opportunities shaping research today.

Zine Making Workshop at SVI

Zine Making Workshop at SVI

St. Volodymyr Institute

Come spend an afternoon making your own zine using simple, hands-on techniques. This workshop is all about experimenting with folding, cutting, and stitching (no prior experience required).

Mindful Monoprint: Pochoir Stenciling

Mindful Monoprint: Pochoir Stenciling

inPrint Collective

Perfect for creatives of any experience level, the focus of this workshop will be to create an image using pre-made stencils and soft/chalk pastels, otherwise known as pochoir. Classically used to fill in colour for etchings and relief prints, we will use this method on it's own to develop our art.

Intermediate Relief Printing: Reduction

Intermediate Relief Printing: Reduction

Flycatcher Press

This course is for people who have a little relief printing experience or have taken our intro to linocut class. In this 6-hour course you will develop your skills in carving and printing relief prints.

Dog Draw XI: New Year, New Ball

Dog Draw XI: New Year, New Ball

Northern Contemporary

This night of life-drawing has a twist - the models are dogs! Besides the cuteness factor (which will be high) you get to practice a whole different set of textures and anatomy. We’ll have a variety of different dogs and pose styles - you get a night unlike any other and you’ll go home with a stack of personal masterpieces to frame and display.

Collage Night

Collage Night

Issues Magazine Shop

Create, cut and paste pieces with a myriad of materials — from contemporary to vintage, and everything in between! — to create memory. Craft a blessing, build a vision board or remix a love poem for things to come. The experience is the joy! Invite your curiosity out on date, or bring a kid, parent, partner or pal: collage is for everyone.

Digital Marketing for Artists & Creatives

Digital Marketing for Artists & Creatives

Findable Digital Marketing Inc.

This beginner-friendly workshop is designed for creatives who want to market their work online. What people see online isn’t random—there’s a strategy behind it. This session breaks down the core principles of digital marketing so you can make your website, portfolio, and online presence more discoverable, engaging, and effective.

Design Evenings TO: Designing for Speed and Scale with AI

Design Evenings TO: Designing for Speed and Scale with AI

In this session, Brian Lin will share how HelloFresh is evolving its approach to rapid testing, data-driven iteration, and creative collaboration, using AI as a partner, not a replacement. Attendees will gain insight into how design teams can maintain craft and cohesion while scaling across products, markets, and technologies.

2 Colour Riso Workshop

2 Colour Riso Workshop

Take home 25qty 11x17" 2-colour Risograph prints of your own creation, plus a print exchange with all workshop participants. In this workshop participants will learn to digitally colour separate an artwork, prepare a file for print, print with a risograph in 2 colours.

TFIG: Thank F*ck It's Glue! Roncy Collage Circle

TFIG: Thank F*ck It's Glue! Roncy Collage Circle

c-suite creative

Ditch the Friday night bar crawl and come make some art with us instead! Our monthly collage circles are basically group therapy, but with glue sticks and magazines.

Otherworld: DesignTO Youth Showcase

Otherworld: DesignTO Youth Showcase

The Otherworld Showcase also marks the culmination of a six-week youth program exploring how art and design can be used as tools for conscious change. The program invited 60 youth to question the systems that shape our realities and to imagine alternative futures rooted in care, collaboration, and possibility.

Trace Monotypes on Washi with Helen McCusker

Trace Monotypes on Washi with Helen McCusker

The Japanese Paper Place

Make your mark! Try expressive printmaking without a press: create a monotype drawing using an inked plate, washi, and your imagination!

Collage Night: The Series

Collage Night: The Series

Issues Magazine Shop

Join Alanna Chelmick for a three-week, collage-making extravaganza. No experience necessary. All supplies provided.

Gel Plate Monoprints on Washi using Custom Stencils & Masks

Gel Plate Monoprints on Washi using Custom Stencils & Masks

The Japanese Paper Place

In this one-day workshop we will work with different creative approaches to making our stencils and masks, followed by printing onto a selection of beautiful washi papers. We’ll also touch on materials and organization for your stencils as well as composing with them.

Lego Letterpress Valentines

Lego Letterpress Valentines

Flycatcher Press

Sometimes we just want to play with legos as adults. This class is the perfect low-key valentines or Pal-entines day date. We will design and print two-colour valentines designs using lego tiles. Participants bring home 10 cards+envelopes each.

Pressure Printing Valentines

Pressure Printing Valentines

Big River Bindery

Join us for this drop-in event where we’ll be making pressure print valentines on the letterpress equipment in the shop. This method uses layers of paper and stickers to create different layers that print darker and lighter on your print.

Collage Night

Collage Night

Issues Magazine Shop

Create, cut and paste pieces with a myriad of materials—from contemporary to vintage, and everything in between!—to create memory. Craft a blessing, build a vision board or remix a love poem for things to come. The experience is the joy! Invite your curiosity out on date, or bring a kid, parent, partner or pal: collage is for everyone.

Design After-Hours TO: Winter 2026

Design After-Hours TO: Winter 2026

An evening for Toronto designers, creatives, and design leaders to connect with others who care deeply about the craft. Share insights, spark ideas, and engage with the community shaping the future of design and pushing the industry forward.

Hands-On Printmaking Workshop

Hands-On Printmaking Workshop

This beginner-friendly workshop will walk you through the process of carving your own stamp block and hand printing with a single-colour process.

Past Events

'Cause maybe they'll happen again, y'know?

Collage Nights

Design Walks: Designing for Joy — A Christmas Market Experience

Secret Planet Holiday Market

Holiday Market

Good Friends Market

Tatreez Wokshop

DesignX Holiday Social: Archetypes & Reflections

Cyanotype Magic: Make Your Prints & Play with Tones!

The Conté Club

Coptic Bookbinding

The Maybe Market

Secret Planet Holiday Market

Loohoo Weird Holiday Market

Holiday Market

Good Friends Market

Lego Letterpress Holiday

Letterpress Club at Open Studio

Yule Sketch Night

Letterpress Notecards

SEO for Creatives

Kids + Adults Lego Letterpress Holiday

Leaders in Fintech: Designing the Bank of the Future

The Green Line Zine Workshop

Hand Lettered Holiday Cards with Erica Pinto

Glad Day's Queer Art & Craft Market : Holiday Edition

Holiday Market

CTRL+SHIFT - Vol 8 Creative Tech Meetup

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Letterpress Posters: Resolutions!

Letterpress Posters: Resolutions!

Freelancer Profiles

Branding + Lettering

Andrea Rodriguez

Vibrant Designer & Mural Artist

We acknowledge the land we are meeting on is the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit.

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