The Design Ventura 2023-24 winners are The Piggott School with their design Colour Countdown, a game inspired by I Spy, but based around colours. Race the clock and engage with the environment around you.

The A3 design sheets submitted to the competition show how the students came up with their idea. They have a clear and consistant brand for their product which they have used throughout the sheets. Each sheet also clearly shows a different step in their process; what there idea is and who it is for, prototyping and testing the product and final design.

The team competed against over 16,000 students from 310 schools across the UK. With their entry, the Piggott School earned a place in the top 10 shortlisted schools. As one of the shortlisted schools, they were invited to pitch their design idea to a panel of judges on in March 2024. After much deliberation, the judges decided they should be the winners of Design Ventura 2023-24. You can watch this video to find out more about what happens at pitching day.

The winning team were awarded with the Design Ventura trophy at the Celebration Event. All top ten shortlisted products are exhibited at the Design Ventura exhibition at the Design Museum.

Following the Celebration Event, the student team worked with design agency Beta Design Office to develop their Design Ventura 2023-24 winning product. The first product development meeting with the designers took place at the designers studio in London.

The winning product is set to be launched in January 2025.

The post DV2023-24 Winning Product- Colour Countdown appeared first on Design Ventura.

Webinar 1: Research and the Design Museum Shop

In the first webinar of the series we heard from Emma Thomas, Senior Commercial Manager at the Design Museum Shop. In addition there are activities which students can follow along with to help them in their research phase.

Webinar 2: Generating ideas and testing

For our second webinar we heard from designer and maker, Max Male who is the inventor of Snapkits. Also there are activities to help students generate ideas when they are stuck.

Webinar 3: Materials and Sustainability

For our third webinar we heard from Joseph Curle from A New Field on their work and working with sustainable processes.

Webinar 4: Branding and Presenting Ideas

For our fourth and final webinar of the year we heard from Heidi El-Kholy from Salt and Sister Studio.

The post DV2024-25 Webinars appeared first on Design Ventura.

Notpla is an alternative to plastic made from seaweed and plants, it is completely natural and entirely biodegradable. Students are asked to be inspired by the theme: Change to design a product to improve everyday life for a specified target user group.

There journey started with the the Ooho, an edible water bubble designed by Co-Founders Rodrigo García González and Pierre Paslier at London’s Imperial College in 2013. The pair began by making each one by hand in their student kitchen, continuously testing new formulations to see if their idea had any chance of success. The name Ooho was quickly born from the unanimous reaction of people’s experience of these edible liquid balls – “Oohooo!”.

Notpla has a series of products which are solutions to single waste plastic! Some of there products offer plastic-free solutions to single use takeaway boxes and food sachets. By utilising the technology they had developed for the Ooho, they could apply this as a natural coating barrier which replaces all that plastic.

Watch the video below for some top tips when producing your design, from idea generation to final pitch:

We are thrilled to welcome Notpla to Design Ventura this year. As well as setting your brief setter, they will join us as expert judges, helping to choose this year’s winning idea at the Pitching Day in March 2025. We can’t wait to see your ideas!

The post Design Ventura 2024-25 Brief Setter: Notpla appeared first on Design Ventura.

All submitted schools will provide feedback on their submissions from our panel of judges. You can read more about them below, in alphabetical order:

Mark Bryley
Mark Bryley works as Strategy Lead in the Financial Crime Data & Risk Intelligence team at Deutsche Bank. Mark has spent more than a decade working on topics including financial crime prevention, compliance, artificial intelligence, data and risk intelligence. A key part of the job is to design and present information to senior decision makers. This requires a confident visual design approach, creativity and attention to detail. Last year Mark joined Design Ventura as a volunteer to support the ten shortlisted teams on presentation day and this year returns as a Shortlisting Judge. 

Mary Leonard
Mary works at the intersection of design, art and technology.  She is the Founder & Creative Director of MRLD (More Reason — Less Decoration), an independent creative studio combining thoughtful ideas with beautiful design to create sensory experiences for ambitious brands. Her work for brands and companies including Google, Nike, the United Nations, and Depop has gained wide recognition from industry and press such as Vogue, Dazed & Confused, D&AD, Cannes Lion, Forbes, ADC, The One Show and FWA. In 2018, she was named a prestigious ADC Young Gun global finalist.

Harry Mitchell
Harry co-founded Beta Design Office, a London based multi-disciplinary design consultancy with a core focus on industrial design. An inventor and maker at heart, Harry’s mechanical intuition and love for how things work means he designs products that last. Previously Associate Director at Sebastian Conran Associates, he has worked on a variety of projects from consumer robotics through to furniture, homewares, and custom motorcycles. 

Malay Nagda
Malay, an award winning designer, heads design team at a financial institution. His diverse portfolio spans across products, including peer-to-peer payment system, an intuitive trading platform and an online market place.  Beyond design, Malay finds artistic expression in the intricate details of origami models. 

Florence Okoye 
Florence (pronouns: she/her) is a UX (User Experience) designer whose practice is based on using service design methods to inclusively design digital experiences and infrastructure. She currently works as a UX designer at the Natural History Museum and is a member of the Kiondo design collective. 

Alex Swain
Alex is a ‘Creative and Experience Director’ and works for Deutsche Bank, Private Bank within the Client Experience team. Alex has led many projects for global brands; managing multi-channel design deliverables across Agile and Marketing teams. He has extensive experience as design lead for internal and external design teams. And one of his key strengths is collaborating closely with colleagues from different backgrounds: strategists, product owners, engineers and SEO experts.  

Ling Tan
Trained as an architect, Ling Tan is a multidisciplinary designer and artist. She explores citizens’ interaction with the built environment through technology, and collective agency and responsibility in tackling complex issues surrounding our cities. Ling works with diverse communities across the UK and rest of the world on projects ranging from interactive performances to pop-up architecture, and addressing issues such as public safety, air quality, climate change and gender safety. Her work has been exhibited in the Centre Pompidou, V&A, Barbican, HeK, Fukuoka City Science Museum, and Wits Art Museum, and featured in the likes of Dezeen, Wired and Fast Company. 

Sheana Yu
Award-winning social entrepreneur who founded Aergo Health with the mission to support wheelchair users in living their lives to the fullest potential through inclusive design. Aergo’s first product, Aergo PS, is a dynamic postural support seating system that uses pressure-sensitive air cells to detect and correct poor posture automatically. It reduces the need for frequent physical repositioning, radically improving independence for wheelchair users. The PS has received backing from the James Dyson Foundation, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Commission 1851 to develop it from an idea into a commercially viable medical device. Sheana’s achievements have been recognized by Innovate UK, and she was one of the nine women to win the highly competitive Women In Innovation award. Since winning, Sheana has been actively involved in public speaking and mentoring, sharing her startup experiences with aspiring designers and engineers passionate about social impact.

The post Shortlisting Judges for 2023-24 appeared first on Design Ventura.

The Design Ventura 2022-23 winners the Piggott School with their product STACK IT!, a 3D puzzle game which challenges users to create 3D designs.

The Piggott School’s design sheets demonstrate how the team generated and developed their ideas. The sheets clearly show the team’s design and prototyping processes and how they planned to address the criteria set out in the design brief, as well as allowing our shortlisting judges to clearly understand the final product design.

The team competed against over 15,000 students from 287 schools across the UK. With their entry, the Piggott School earned a place in the top 10 shortlisted schools. As one of the shortlisted schools, they were invited to pitch their design idea to a panel of judges on 22 March. After much deliberation, the judges decided they should be the winners of Design Ventura 2021-22. You can watch this video to find out more about what happens at pitching day.

The winning team were awarded with the Design Ventura trophy at the Celebration Event. All top ten shortlisted products are exhibited at the Design Ventura exhibition at the Design Museum.

Following the Celebration Event, the student team worked with design agency Map Project Office to develop their Design Ventura 2022-24 winning product. The first product development meeting with the designers took place at the designers studio in London.

The product was launched at the Design Museum Shop on 23 January 2024. On the launch day, the team put their sales skills to the test, selling their product at the Deutsche Bank Office. Impressively, they sold 37 packs in less than an hour.

The students then head to the Design Museum to see their product on sale in the shop! They continued their successful selling streak, selling 3 more products to Director of the Design Museum, Tim Marlow.

All photos ©James Polley Photography/Design Museum

The post 2022-23 Winning Product, STACK IT! appeared first on Design Ventura.

The top three schools were then invited to a prize day at the Design Museum on Tuesday 6 July. The students had an award ceremony, a sustainable design workshop followed by access to the Design Museum exhibitions, Ai Weiwei: Making Sense and The Offbeat Sari.

Josephine Chanter, Director of Audiences at the Design Museum announced this year’s awards to the top 3 shortlisted teams. We are happy to announce the prizes awarded were:

Third Place: St. Lawrence College
Aqua Utensil
A kitchen utensil designed with five interchangeable ends which fit onto a bamboo handle!

Second Place: The King’s School
Reely
Reely is a space-saving product that will provide a neat, mess-free place for your cables and wires.

First Place: Halcyon London International School
Monster Mouth
The Monster Mouth is a product designed to encourages children to feed the “monster” their clothing items or rubbish to help tidy spaces!

Well done teams!

All photos ©Richard Heald Photography/Design Museum

The post International and Independent Category Winners 2022-23 appeared first on Design Ventura.

The event was kicked off by Stella Fong, Head of Learning at the Design Museum. To begin the celebrations, schools were invited to join an insightful talk from Heba Tabidi, DJ and founder of SpaceBlack and Harrison Marshall, Co-Founder of design and build practice CAUKIN Studio.

After tea and cake students had a chance to compete against one another in a design challenge to build the highest Jenga Tower. Following on from this the students participated in an exciting typography workshop led by Sarah Hyndman from Type Tasting.

In the afternoon, students and guests enjoyed a careers insight speed networking activity meeting various design and business experts including a graphic designer, product designer, illustrator, and UX/UI designer to name a few.

In the evening, the Design Museum opened its doors to the shortlisted school teams, their teachers, family and friends, Deutsche Bank employees, design industry experts, the Design Museum team and special VIP guests to celebrate the success of Design Ventura 2021-22.

The Awards

Josephine Chanter began by welcoming the schools and guests to the museum. Then, this was followed by Tim Marlow, CEO and Director of the Design Museum and Christoph Woermann, Chief Marketing Officer of Corporate Bank Marketing at Deutsche Bank.

Judges then took it in turn to announce the Design Ventura awards:

OUTSTANDING FINALIST: Ferndown Upper School
OUTSTANDING FINALIST: Upper Hall School
OUTSTANDING FINALIST: Langley Park School for Boys
COMMENDATION FOR BEST DESIGN PROCESS: South Wilts Grammar School
COMMENDATION FOR BEST FIT TO BRIEF: Prendergast Ladywell School
COMMENDATION FOR MOST EMPATHIC DESIGN: Orleans Park School
COMMENDATION FOR INGENUITY: Upton by Chester High School
Third Place: Colchester Royal Grammar School
Second Place: Cambourne Village College

Christoph Woermann announced the winning team The Piggott School with ‘STACK IT‘, A 3D architectural puzzle structure which challenges users to complete different tasks!

Following the award ceremony, the Design Ventura Exhibition was unveiled including all the student made prototypes. This year the display included the past winning product Stack It! by The Piggott School. The exhibition will run from 27 April – 26 June 2023. You can find out more about visiting the exhibition here.

Thank you to all the schools, judges and guests for attending for this very special event celebrating the achievements of the Design Ventura 2021-22 finalists!

All photos ©Richard Heald Photography/Design Museum

The post Celebration Event: Design Ventura 2022-23 appeared first on Design Ventura.

Each team had a chance to present their product idea and prototypes to our panel of expert judges who were extremely impressed with the professionalism of the students’ three minute pitches.

The judges from left to right: Christoph Woermann, Preena Pate, Sujata Burman, Selasi Setufe and Sebastian Conran.

Amy Harris, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility UK at Deutsche Bank, kicked off the event with a very warm welcome to Winchester House.

The panel had a fantastic time meeting the students, watching their presentations and questioning them about their product ideas. The students were very well prepared and gave fantastic answers!

Whilst the judges were busy deliberating and having to make very difficult decisions choosing all the prize winners, the students took part in a networking session with the other top 10 schools!

The winner will be announced in April when all the schools will return to the Design Museum for the Celebration Event.

All photos ©Richard Heald/Design Museum

The post Pitching Day: Design Ventura 2022-23 appeared first on Design Ventura.

Christoph Woermann
Christoph Woermann is CMO for Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Bank division. The Corporate Bank comprises commercial client banking business with transaction banking products and services for both, corporates and financial institutions, including domestic and cross-border payments, risk mitigation and financing international trade and the provision of trust, agency, depositary, custody and related services.

Preena Patel
Preena Patel is the Buying and Merchandising Manager at the Design Museum with over a decade of experience in retail positioning, licensing, brand buying and product development and is accountable for delivery of commercially successful ranges instore and online.

Preena is also Retail strategist for multi-disciplinary artist Yinka Ilori. Preena has a creative and commercial approach to retail aided by her training in fashion design, has obsessive passion for product, and takes great satisfaction from watching customer reactions in store!

Sebastian Conran
Sebastian wanted to be an inventor whilst at school and got A levels in Maths Physics and Chemistry; then he studied Industrial Design Engineering at Central St. Martins, where he gave the Sex Pistols their first booking and designed record sleeves and posters for The Clash. After this he worked at corporate identity consultancy Wolff Olins followed by leading hard-goods development at Mothercare, after which he founded Sebastian Conran Associates design studio in 1986 and taught furniture design at the Royal College of Art. Sebastian is now a trustee of the Design Museum, Chair of the Conran Foundation and Conran + Partners, Visiting Professor of Design & Innovation at Bristol Robotics Lab, Designer in Residence at University of Sheffield engineering faculty; he also writes & lectures on innovation.

Selasi Setufe MBE
The Design Ventura 2022-23 brief setter, Selasi Setufe  is an architect with an interest in exploring socially responsive approaches to design, architecture and placemaking. She is co- director of Black Females in Architecture, an organisation which advocates for diversity, race and gender equity in Architecture, Design & Construction industries.

Sujata Burman

Sujata is a writer and editor, specialising in design and culture. She was Design Editor at Wallpaper* Magazine before moving to her current role of Editor at London Design Festival and London Design Biennale. In 2019, she co-authored ‘An Opinionated Guide to London Architecture’, driven by her aim to make the fields of design and architecture accessible to wider audiences.

The post Design Ventura Judging Panel 2022-23 appeared first on Design Ventura.

Thank you to all the teachers and students who have worked so hard on this year’s project. This year we have a shortlist of ten state schools in the main competition for this year’s celebration event in April.

We had over 15,000 students participating this year, so our panel of shortlisting judges did not have an easy task. After much debate, the final top ten state school entries and top three schools in the International and Independent Category were selected – please see a full list in alphabetical order below.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

All schools that have submitted an entry for Design Ventura will receive feedback from our judges and will be sent participation certificates for their students by post – we will send these soon.

This year, the top ten state shortlisted schools will be contacted with further details about the Pitching event taking place on Tuesday 22 March at the Winchester House. 

DESIGN VENTURA SHORTLIST 2021-22

(in alphabetical order)

Cambourne Village College, Cambridge

Starlight
A constellation projector that works with your phone torch, so you can look at the stars wherever you are.           

Colchester Royal Grammar School
The O-Box
A desk organiser which you can take anywhere to organise your everyday work or leisure items!

South Wilts Grammar School
Texture Turtles
A sensory toy made of recycled materials to help users manage their anxiety.

Ferndown Upper School
Bauhaus in a Bottle
A 3D, interactive frame which brings design history to life.

The Piggott School
STACK IT!
A 3D architectural puzzle structure which challenges users to complete different tasks!

Langley Park School for Boys

Fold’n’Grow

An origami set create your own plant pots at home, featuring a design for every season. 

Upton Hall School FCJ
Globe
A beautiful kirigami kit, with a circular product life and plantable packaging

Orleans Park School
TipTab
An inclusively designed bottle tab opener which users can mould to the shape of their own hands.        

Upton-by-Chester High School
Bee Buddy (BBDY)
A reusable bee-house for your garden, providing bees with both food and shelter.

Prendergast Ladywell School, London
Day Out Dice
A dice game and website, for fun accessible day trips for all the family.

INTERNATIONAL AND INDEPENDENT CATEGORY

(in alphabetical order)

Halcyon London International
Monster Munch
The Monster Mouth is a product designed to encourages children to feed the “monster” their clothing items or rubbish to help tidy spaces!

Kings School Caterbury
Reely
Reely is a space-saving product that will provide a neat, mess-free place for your cables and wires.

St Lawrence College
Aqua Utensil
A kitchen utensil designed with five interchangeable ends which fit onto a bamboo handle!

The post Design Ventura 2022-23 Shortlist appeared first on Design Ventura.