Design Bridge

When we set our annual student awards brief back in January 2020 – asking students to ‘design the decade we deserve’ by picking an article from the 01/01/20 issue of The Guardian newspaper, selecting a brand from our list of 14, and delivering a creative response – we couldn’t have imagined what the beginning of this decade would end up being.

Due to all of the uncertainty, disruption and challenges that came with 2020, the judging of our annual student competition had to be delayed, but towards the end of last year we invited everyone at Design Bridge to review all of the entries and vote for their favourite to create a shortlist. Our panel of final round judges then spent a morning of virtual debate and discussion to agree on the best of the best, and we can now finally share the outcome and officially congratulate our winners!

But first, a special ‘thank you’ to this year’s final round judges:

• - Christopher Algar, Senior Designer at Design Bridge London who set our 2020 brief
• - Emma Follett, Chief Creative Officer
• - Claire Robertshaw, Executive Creative Director of Design Bridge London
• - Tim Perkins, Group Chairman
• - David Helps, Group Innovation Lead

We were also joined by two special guests to help us decide on the final winners:

• - Ben Longden, Design Director at Guardian News & Media
• - Stephanie Verschoor, Global Director Design, UX and Brand Experience at RB

Our panel were blown away by the strategic thinking and overall standard of the work submitted, but there was one entry that they all agreed should be this year’s winner.

And so, we are delighted to announce that Train Like An Olympian by Eve Wallis and Alice Stone from Nottingham Trent University is the winner of our Student Awards 2020 competition!

Choosing a Guardian article about the Tokyo 2020 Games, Eve and Alice’s concept was inspired by the stamina required by athletes to train for an extra year before the delayed games in 2021, cleverly positioning sex as “the most popular sport in the world”.

The competition judges felt that the idea and execution was very strong, and that it could successfully move the brand into the world of sport, fitness and wellness. Claire explained further:

“The design execution is bold and simple, and flexes the brand’s equities in a playful way that feels very intuitive. Eve and Alice have come up with an incredibly powerful and inclusive concept and they have executed it brilliantly – these two are ones to watch.”

Ben also shared some thoughts:

“It was an honour to be a guest judge for this year’s Design Bridge competition and see such a consistently high-level of talent amongst a wide range of entries. Congratulations Eve and Alice for their winning piece, which showed a strong creative concept from idea to execution, and responded so brilliantly to the brief.”

Eve and Alice have each won £400, a bespoke trophy and a paid placement with our London Studio, which will take place remotely due to the current Covid restrictions.

We’d also like to give a special mention to Daniel Swainson, also from Nottingham Trent University, and to Isabela Robinson from Northumbria University, both of whom were named as Runners Up this year for their Run Wild and Harmonise ideas respectively.

Daniel and Isabela have each won £200, a bespoke trophy, and a virtual portfolio review and mentoring session with a member of the Design Bridge London team.

The judges also wanted to give an Honourable Mention to Aniello Cashmore from Coventry University for his Come Together Against Discrimination concept, which also made the shortlist and impressed them this year.

A huge congratulations to Eve, Alice, Daniel, Isabela and Aneillo for their amazing work, and a big “thank you” to everyone else who entered and inspired us with their creativity.

So, 2021?

We’re excited to share that we’re in the process of revamping our student awards and graduate programmes for 2021 and we’ll be sharing the details here very soon…