WINNER
Charlotte Liebling
Charlotte Liebling graduated from Central St Martins in 2018 with a first class honours in product design before moving to Bow&Arrow, where she is a designer working on products, services and solutions for high- profile clients.
She is also founder and CEO of Loved Before, a company that gives old soft toys a new lease of life. Teddies and soft toys are donated, cleaned and fixed up before being photographed and the story of their old life captured.
Customers then discover more about each toy through a dedicated site where they can be purchased, wrapped in recyclable and biodegradable packaging and sent to their new home. Half of the profits are donated to children’s charity Make A Wish UK.
Liebling came up with the idea, designed everything and thought about how it could work as a responsible business; an impressive vision which wasn’t lost on our judges.
Meanwhile, with Bow & Arrow she was design lead on a project to transform the online customer experience for retailer John Lewis and also led on a series of connectivity products for telecommunications company Liberty Global, which included Omni, an accessible and interactive visualisation of network strength and security.
Zimeng Wang
Chinese fine artist turned full-stack designer Zimeng Weng lives and works in the US where she graduated with a masters of fine arts in graphic design in 2019.
Wang is a designer at TapIn Mobile Solutions, where she works across graphic design, web design and sports design projects.
Alongside this, she has also created and exhibited her project Design as Criticism, which is a study in the contrast between censorship in China and free speech in the US. It consists of three parts.
Banned Branding is a rebranding of China’s Ministry and Media, the state department which censors media content. Wang’s rebranding is a playful take on the department which also emphasises transparency, for example adding a comment section to its website.
Having collected more than 60 banned movies from China and categorised them around why they were banned, Wang created a pop-up Banned Theatre cinema that only plays banned movies from China.
After collecting 5,000 words that are banned in China, Wang translated them onto a long strip of paper and projected a video over the top, explaining why they had been banned but in a “subversive and humorous way” under the title Banned Exhibition.
Nick Garratt
Cyber-Duck visual designer Nick Garratt joined the studio on a 12- month degree placement, which was made permanent on the strength of his work.
His introduction to graphic design was designing Fourza Motorsport liveries at the age of 17 via his own company.
Cyber-Duck says he has “surprised and delighted” clients including Financial Ombudsman Service, TfL and Sport England.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Garratt was inspired to create a magazine project, Quaranzine. He invited frustrated designers and creatives from around the world to contribute anything they wanted with a double page spread in a bid to foster a sense of help, build a community and learn and share skills.
Garratt says, “If I'm stuck inside, not out taking photos, visiting exhibitions or at a music gig, my mind will be racing. With limited creative outlets, this can be super frustrating.
“To combat this, I launched an artistic punchbag for frustrated creatives around the world. An open call to anyone with a creative spark and more time than they know what to do with.”
In the process, Garratt has now released several issues and managed design, printing, shipping and crowdfunding, as well as marketing. A team of 50 core artists from a variety of creative disciplines now contribute from four continents.
Callum Laird
In 2020, after completing a masters at Dundee University in Design Thinking on the back of a graphic design degree, Laird started as a designer with Hutchinson Technologies.
Here, he played a leading role in encouraging people back to Dundee town centre after the first lockdown in 2020 in the Union Street Project, which was part of the Dundee City Council’s Spaces for People programme.
The brief was to encourage social distancing while supporting business safely outdoors. Laird branded the initiative taking inspiration from traditional street signs and adding a contemporary twist. This played out across digital and physical touchpoints.
Environmental supergraphics were designed as pedestrian crossings so that both pedestrians and motorists would interact with them. It delineates the Union Street area and encourages pedestrians off the pavement and onto the street in a safe way. The same design language continues up the street.
A Council survey found 84% of traders thought the changes had been positive for the street, with 62% saying it was good for their business.
Rising Star
shortlisted
Frederick Horn
Using Sainsbury’s bags for life as a starting point, Frederick Horn has designed waterproof jackets which are also a piece of visual communication.
While Horn has designed and created a practical, wearable jacket, he also wanted to make a comment on “absurd, needless consumption”.
The jacket uses every part of the bag and has been tested. Some 10 bags go into each jacket. He even got the seal of approval from the Sainsbury’s bag for life’s original designer Susan Roberts, who thought the design was an “innovative way to reuse reusables”.
In order to make a workable material, Horn made a single length of fabric, 1x7.3 metres in length. These sheets of material can also be used for matching trousers. The handles were saved for detailing.
Inspiration has been taken from Freitag bags, which are made from reused truck tarpaulins, and Helen Kirkum’s upcycled trainers.
Rising Star