What is this? Since the beginning I have been asked this question countless times. From family members peering over my shoulder to look at my earliest notebook scribblings, to investors, wary of sinking their cash into a project that is - at least in appearance - so ambiguous. But The Hamburg Design Review is not ambiguous. We have a direction. I come from a family of reviewers and writers. People who, like those who chase after storms, have spent their lives leaping into 4x4 vehicles and driving towards the horizon of the mind. Chasers of ideals and ideas, those who seek to fuse styles and bridge conceptual gaps. Ultimately, to find forms of public expression that are more innovative, and more inviting.The HDR is a forum for such expression, be it serious, or silly, or written, or visual, perhaps aural. Who knows and who could even say? Perhaps, if we are lucky, we will have all of these given to us, in one heady shot of the contemporary.So what is this? Now I ask you.I ask you to pick up the salt shaker and that little wedge of lime.Let us try this shot together.The Editor x.