Awards are expensive ordeals. I remember trying to push my work out as a design student and being absolutely shocked at the amount I was required to pay to just get my work into the preliminary judging round. Most students (and a few professional studios and brands too) shy away from award programmes because of the expenditure required to just register your work, but that expense is justified because most award programs have A. Large jury panels of design elite, B. Logistics and inventory managing expenses for designs where prints and product samples are sent over for judging, and C. The award ceremony which needless to say, is a monumental undertaking, involving venue bookings, decor, light, sound, personnel, logistics, travel, hospitality, etc. All these costs get covered by contestants who pay fees for registering their designs for the various judging rounds.
So the question begs to be asked… What if you stripped a design competition of everything unnecessary? A minimalist awards program, if you will. That’s what the Asia Design Prize was built to be. Online judging, an online exhibition, and digital certificates… the Asia Design Prize is probably the first cloud-based Design Award! Barring the one tangible trophy, the Asia Design Prize retains everything that’s absolutely necessary i.e., the judging, the award, and the showcase. As a result, the Asia Design Prize is the most student-friendly design award programme, with minimal incurred expenses. As a result, the awards program is absolutely free for students, with a zero entry fee for all participants, and a small Finalist Judging Fee for Design Professionals and Companies who clear the first round.
The ADP hosts a permanent online exhibition for all its winners, with works being featured in design magazines and blogs world over. Winners get trophies along with a certificate and the rights to use the ADP logo on their work, while the Grand, Gold, and Silver winners get cash prizes and framed plaques.
The Asia Design Prize is a brilliant way to get your work noticed as well as validated. Free for students, it’s your chance to get a critical evaluation of your work without breaking the bank, and if you do win an award, an award logo is a great addition to your résumé! People pay much closer attention to projects that win awards or gain accolades, and there’s a dramatic increase in your chances of getting featured on various portals across the world!
Head to the Asia Design Prize website to know more! They’ve just announced their 2017-18 winners. You can find our favorites below!
Oren Geva’s 2C3D camera for the blind is a beautiful, innovative product that takes 3D images, allowing the visually impaired to capture, record, and more importantly, feel their photographs!
The ORBIKE Vending Machine by LiuYeQuan and LiYanrong is sure to catch your eye even if you don’t ride bicycles! The donut-shaped machine rests half above and half below the surface, with rotating pods that dispense bikes and biking accessories to users/members, while also displaying its wares in a beautiful, eye-catching, and dynamic format. Loving it!
The Revolve Wheel took the internet absolutely by storm and is widely known as a design that has “reinvented the wheel”. Andrea Mocellin’s wheel redesign allows your traditional wheel to fold up into something 1/6th its original size, opening up a wide variety of possibilities, including making folding bikes and wheelchairs much more compact than before!
A personal favorite and also the winner of Evolo’s Skyscraper Competition, the New York Horizon by Yitan Sun & Jianshi Wu has a very Inception-ish way of making Central Park bigger, and removing those ugly skyscrapers from around it. Line the entire park with mirrors and you’ve got an infinity park that pushes the skyscrapers to a distance, making your skyline look cleaner, and the park look endless! Conceptual, for obvious reasons, the NY Horizon as an idea seems quite interesting and borderline sci-fi! I imagine it would confuse the hell out of the birds though.
Fan Shizhong’s Life Slide is a no-brainer award winner, honestly. Also bagging an A’ Design Award, James Dyson Award, and an iF Design Award, the Life Slide makes evacuations much easier to execute, by allowing people stuck at high altitudes to slide away from disaster. A much more feasible and safer option than an airlift, the Life Slide is MUCH faster than a ladder, which means the ability to save more people in less time!
