The panel was made up of design and business professionals, who spoke about what they do for a living, how they got where they are and how they use creativity in their jobs, to give students an insight into the different careers in design and business.

You can learn more about each panellist, in alphabetical order by surname, below:

Malaika Carr
www.thechalkhouse.com

Chalk is a London based design studio run by architect Malaika who creates unusual, geometric jewellery.

Chalk is influenced by architectural elements, everyday objects and bold colourful cultural patterns. Founder Malaika established her jewellery line while studying architecture at the University of Westminster. Here she made numerous intricate models using the laser cutting machine; she started to use the same process to make her own jewellery which later became the label. Since graduation she has continued to make her own pieces and the brand has developed to include their own e-commerce shop as well as supplying a number of exciting stockists around the world.

Richard Hayes
www.playlenz.com

Richard is founder of Heayes Design and Playlenz which are game and toy development and invention studios.

Having worked for over 30 years in product design with the majority spent working in the play industry. Richard was Design Director for games at Hasbro looking after brands such as Monopoly, Cluedo, Connect 4 and Trivial Pursuit as well as working on brands such as Playdoh, Star Wars and Marvel. 

Most of the work today involves creating and developing new play concepts as well as inventing and licensing new concepts to global toy and game companies. 

Huw James
www.studiotdh.com

Huw has 20 years’ experience in the creative industries, working at design agencies in England and Australia before starting his own studio, Tom, Dick & Harry, in his home city of Leeds.

Huw uses design thinking and a human-centred approach to solve creative problems in branding and design. He is a Fellow of the RSA and is studying an MBA at the University of Manchester, exploring the intersection of creativity and business as a force for good.

Sourav Mishra
www.db.com

Sourav is a Product Manager in the Technology, Data and Innovation division of Deutsche Bank. He is a Capability Lead who partners with business colleagues, technology architects and developers to identify innovative solutions.

Sourav has a particular focus on Risk Calculation and Operations and uses the latest big data technologies to solve complex high volume challenges. He has been with Deutsche Bank since 2010 and has worked on numerous projects across the Risk Management space.

Ling Tan
www.lingql.com

Ling is a designer and artist working within the field of social engagement, technology and citizen participation. Originally trained as an architect, her work explores citizens’ interaction with the built environment and our collective agency and responsibility in tackling complex issues surrounding our cities. She works with diverse communities in helping them make sense of their environment, express opinions in a playful and performative way, and collectively address issues ranging from public safety, air quality to climate change using technology and participation methodologies.

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Webinar 1: Audiences with Resolve Collective
Akil Scafe-Smith, Designer and Co-Founder of Resolve Collective talks about audiences

Webinar 2: Coming up with Ideas with Fixperts
Daniel Charny, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Fixperts talks about coming up with ideas

Webinar 3: Prototyping & Materials with Helen Kirkum Studio
Sustainable sneaker designer Helen Kirkum talks about prototyping and materials

Webinar 4 – Colour & Communication with The Fandangoe Kid
Annie Nicholson, aka The Fandangoe Kid, talks about colour and communication

Please share these videos with your students and please take a moment to give us your feedback here.

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The judges were incredibly impressed by the professionalism of the students’ pitch videos. You can watch a selection of short snippets of these in the video below:

The seven state schools also joined the judges for a 15 minute live Q&A session. This was an opportunity for the judges to ask the students further questions about their design process and product idea. The judges really enjoyed meeting the students and learning more about their designs.

Well done to all the student teams for all their hard work. We look forward to welcoming the state schools to the Design Museum for the Celebration Event on Friday 11 June 2021, where the winner will be announced. The schools in the International and Independent Category will attend an award day at the Design Museum in July.

Good luck teams!

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The Design Ventura 2019 winners are Twynham School with their product originally called Design Cubes (now Creative [Un]blocks), a set of dice that help combat creative block. Users roll three dice to create a brief that they have to answer in 60 seconds. This fun and inspiring game was a favourite of the judges. 

Twynham 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 16,000 students from 300 schools across the UK. With their entry, Twynham School earned a place in the shortlist as one of the ten schools invited to pitch their ideas to a panel of expert judges at Winchester House in December 2019. You can watch this video to find out more about what happens at pitching day.

The team made a convincing case for Design Cubes at the pitching event, presenting an engaging pitch and demonstrating clearly how the product fulfilled the design brief and judges criteria. After much deliberation, the judges decided they should be the winners of Design Ventura 2019.

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

Following the Celebration Event, students from Twynham School worked with design studio Triple Double to develop their Design Ventura 2019 winning product. The first product development meeting with the designers took place via Zoom during lock down.

For the second meeting the students travelled to Mile End in London to see the Triple Double Studio.

The socially distanced meeting was followed by a creative workshop where the students used disposable cameras to capture examples of typography in the area.

Due to lockdown, the product was launched on the Design Museum Shop online. Retailing at £5.95, all proceeds from the sales go to the students’ chosen charity Rainforest Alliance UK.

To celebrate the launch of their product, the students enjoyed a half day or creative activities including a typography workshop led by Sarah Hyndman from Type Tasting and had an unboxing of their product.

In February 2021, the Design Museum Shop window had a Creative [Un]Blocks window takeover in High Street Kensington, to showcase the physical products to passers by. Creative [Un]Blocks sold out and raised a grand total of £1560 for Rainforest Alliance UK.

The student team returned to the Design Museum on 17 June 2021 to present a cheque to their chosen charity Rainforest Alliance UK.

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This mini challenge ran for 20 weeks. Each week a prize was awarded for the best design submitted into the virtual Ventura postbox, chosen by one of our expert volunteers.

This weekly competition was open to everyone; students, designers, adults and young people of all ages. It was a fun design challenge for all the family!

We are excited to announce that we will be rerunning the online mini challenge for KS3 students in the Autumn term, so watch this space for more information.

The brief was to come up with a new, creative product for the Design Museum Shop, upload a photo of the design and fill out a form for a chance to win.

Each week we announced the winning design via Twitter and Instagram and that person will be sent a prize in the post. Below is the design brief:

Here are the winning submissions to the Design Ventura Mini Challenge:

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The day was kicked off by Fiona MacDonald, Head of Learning at the Design Museum, who was followed by two great talks, one from Jessica Ryan-Ndegwa from Design for Disability and another about Learning to Fail from Paul Jenkins at Triple Double.

After tea and cake and while friends and family were on a tour of Beazley Designs of the Year, students had a chance to participate in an exciting paper forms workshop led by designer Haidée Drew and a typography workshop led by Sarah Hyndman from Type Tasting.

In the afternoon students and guests enjoyed a careers insight speed networking activity, which allowed them to ask experts from industry about how their creative and enterprise skills have supported their successful transition into the workplace.

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 2019.

The event gave the students a chance to explain their innovative products to guests, network with people from the industry and be advocates for their schools. Guest were really impressed with the confidence and communication skills that the students demonstrated.

Last year’s winners Simon Balle All-through School presented a cheque of £2,479.24 from the proceeds of their product (Active Snap) to a representative of their chosen charity, MOVE.

The anticipated announcement of the Design Ventura 2019 awards was presented by the judges: Katie Greenyer, Morag Myerscough and Joseph Halligan.

The prizes were awarded as follows: Blythe Bridge High School, County Upper School, George Spencer Academy and Wallington High School for Girls were awarded as Outstanding Finalists; Ashcroft Technology Academy was awarded Commendation for Most Market Ready Product; Cardinal Newman Catholic School was awarded Commendation for Ingenuity; and Upton-by-Chester High School was awarded Commendation for the Sustainable Design. The third place was awarded to Trinity School; second place was awarded to Ferndown Upper School and finally the Design Ventura Winner 2019 was Twynham School with Design Cubes.

Following the award ceremony, the Design Ventura Exhibition with prototypes from all ten shortlisted schools was unveiled. This year, the display also includes all past winning student designed products from the past decade of the programme and an interactive area where members of the public can tackle the Design Ventura brief. The display is up until 27 May.

The Celebration Event was about celebrating design and congratulating all those involved in Design Ventura 2019. Thank you to everyone who participated in the Design Ventura project making it such a success!

All photos ©Richard Heald Photography/Design Museum

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Thank you to all the teachers and students who have worked so hard on this year’s project. It is thanks to all of you that Design Ventura is such a huge success!

We had over 16,000 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 submissions 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 participation certificates for all their students by post – we will send the certificates soon.

This year’s shortlisted state schools will be contacted with further details about the Pitching Event taking place at Winchester House on Monday 9 December.

DESIGN VENTURA SHORTLIST 2019

(in alphabetical order)

Ashcroft Technology Academy, London
Rocket Man Bookmark
A rocket shaped bookmark, with an attached rocket man, that can be customized with photos.

Blythe Bridge High School, Staffordshire
Pixel Bricks
An art/design kit that allows people to create pixelated designs and patterns using coloured pieces that fit together like a jigsaw.

Cardinal Newman Catholic School, East Sussex
Travel Buddy
A travel tag that can be customized with stickers, to help people remember what they need to pack for their holidays.

County Upper School, Suffolk
Magnamals
Animal shaped magnets that come in three pieces so that they can be mixed and matched to create new creatures.

Ferndown Upper School, Dorset
Finger Fussball
A design themed version of finger football where the teams are made up of figures from the Bauhaus and other art/design movements.

George Spencer Academy, Nottinghamshire
Colour the Rainforest
A rainforest themed activity kit for children that includes a rainforest colouring in sheet and felt pencil toppers/finger puppets of endangered animals. The kit aims to raise awareness about endangered animals and their habitats.

Trinity School, Berkshire
Roll up Bamboo Pencil Case
A sustainable roll up bamboo pencil case.

Twynham School, Dorset
Design Cubes
A dice game that helps people generate design ideas and combats creative block. Three dice with different categories help students generate creative ideas.

Upton-by-Chester High School, Cheshire
Food Chain Puzzle
An educational wooden puzzle for young children, where the organisms must be put in the order that they appear in the food chain.

Wallington High School for Girls, Surrey
Jigsters
A set of cork coasters in jigsaw shapes, that fit together to form a place-mat depicting imagery relating to the Design Museum exhibition Moving to Mars.

INTERNATIONAL AND INDEPENDENT CATEGORY

Schools in this category will be contacted separately and will be asked to submit a three-minute video pitch.

(in alphabetical order)

Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls, Hertfordshire
Four Treasures
A board game that helps children learn about geography.

More House School, Surrey
Grip Spin
A self-assemble fidget toy that attaches to the end of a pencil or pen.

Wrekin College, Shropshire
Iso-Box
A drawing aid shaped like a London telephone box that includes a ruler and a protractor.

The post Design Ventura Shortlist 2019 appeared first on Design Ventura.

The judges loved Spalding School’s Family Stuff Fund. The panel liked that the idea improved every day life for one of the Design Museum Shop’s target users – families. This was well demonstrated thorough development, prototyping and research.

Below is their submission form and A3 sheets. We’d like to highlight some of the strengths and some areas for improvement from their submission, things to look out for when submitting for Design Ventura 2019.

Strengths:

1. Clarity – the layout is clear and easy to understand. The sheets clearly communicate what the product is and show the design process. Also, each sheet has the name of the school at the bottom.
2. Design Development – the sheets show the design process. They include initial sketches of the idea, research into similar existing products, photos of prototypes and ideas for packaging design.
3. Budgeting – they have looked at costings and suppliers.

Areas for improvement:

1. Further research – while they have shown good research of other similar products, some further research of the Design Museum Shop specifically could have been useful to show.
2. User testing and feedback – including feedback on their design by their target audience would have strengthened this entry.
3. Sustainability – more information about how they plan to minimise the negative impact of their product on the environment would have strengthened this entry.

The Spalding High School team made it into the Design Ventura 2018 top ten shortlist with this submission. They pitched their ideas to our expert judges at the Pitching Event in December and were awarded ‘commendation for most market ready product’ at the Celebration Event in February.

We can’t wait to see all the wonderful submissions for Design Ventura 2019!

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The judges were impressed with East Barnet School’s product, BEEkind, a colourful card made from bee saving paper that includes a step by step guide to reviving exhausted bees, which won them second place for Design Ventura 2018. You can read all about the awards event here.

Their Second Place Prize Day began with a tour of the Holland Park Ecology Centre, where the team learnt all about bees and what can be done to protect them and increase their numbers.

Following this, the team went out into Holland park to capture and identify different types of bees. In total they caught and identified four types of bee and one hover fly, masquerading as a bee.

After lunch, the team enjoyed a tour of David Adjaye: Making Memory with Museum Educator Tiffany Radmore and a design workshop with graphic designer Lilly Marques.

The students pitched their further developed product idea to Steven Preston, Retail Operations Manager at the Design Museum and were awarded with bee themed goody bags in recognition of their hard work.

Thank you to everyone who made the day such an enjoyable one and congratulations once again to East Barnet School!

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Duncan Sanders, Head of Trading and Sevra Davis, Head of Learning at the Design Museum started the event by handing out the awards.

We are happy to announce the prizes awarded were:

THIRD PLACE
International Community School
Cubic Maths – A game that helps children learn maths, three cubes make up sums that you answer against an opponent.

SECOND PLACE
Lady Eleanor Holles School
SCRATCH IT – An A6 calendar where you scratch off each day to reveal a fun design fact.

FIRST PLACE
The St Michael Steiner School
The Copper Line – A science kit, where a battery, magnets and copper wire produce electromagnetic waves to propel a ‘train’ through a ‘tunnel’. 

After the prize giving, Peter Ayres from Beep Studio talked to students about his journey to becoming a designer and then lead the group in a fast paced workshop exploring how they can use drawing to communicate their product ideas.

Tea and cake made the perfect end of a fun afternoon celebrating great designs.

Well done teams!

All photos ©Richard Heald Photography/Design Museum

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