It's grey and wet here in London, but happily it's that time of year when the movers and shakers of the design world head south to Cape Town for one of the most eagerly anticipated of annual conferences, Design Indaba. This year, speakers lined up include data visualiser Ben Fry, design and branding veteran Michael Wolff, and Robert Wong of Google Creative Labs – all of whom will be looking to elaborate on how creativity can create a better world...

As ever, there will be an international line up of speakers. From the UK studios Bibliothèque and Hat-Trick - will will be there, as will veteren graphic designer and brand consultant Michael Wolf, and interaction designer Nelly Ben Hayoun, whose Super K Sonic Booooum project appeared in last December's issue of CR:

From the US, director and title sequence designer Karin Fong of Imaginary Forces is due to speak, as is Coca-Cola VP, David Butler, and, as mentioned Robert Wong of Google Creative Labs. Also from the US, epic scale prankster Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere is going to do a talk. He's known for creating public stunts to surprise and entertain  people when and where they're least expecting it – and there's promise of a crazy stunt during Indaba week...

Here's a rather great example of his work:

From Europe, the president of much loved product design company Alessi, Alberto Alessi, will be arriving from Italy. Israeli graphic and often experimental type designer, Oded Ezer - whose work appears in the CR Type Annual and whose latest project, Face Type, involves hand drawn type and Skype – will be speaking, as will Renny Ramakers, co-founder and director of Droog in Amsterdam.

More local speakers include Cape Town's Brad Armitage and Rui Esteves of &Union who will be talking about entrepreneurship, Port Elizabethe-based textile designer Laduma Ngxokolo will also speak, and architect Francis Kéré from Burkina Faso in West Africa will discuss his work which is driven by development strategies.

And this is merely scraping the surface - there's plenty more speakers, exhibitions, workshops, screenings and related events happening as part of the design festival.

Design Indaba runs from February 23-25. More details at designindaba.com. CR will be there and be blogging our Indaba experiences through the week.