The winner of Black+Blum’s first Student Design Competition has been announced following an impressive array of entries from pupils aged 11-14 years from schools across the UK!
The competition, which challenged children across the country to design a new food and drink on-the-go product for teens, has been won by 13-year old Dana who designed an innovative lunchbox/cup.
“We established the competition to help children develop their creativity, analysis, evaluation and presentation skills whilst remote learning,” say the competition founders Dan Black (Co-founder and lead designer at Black+Blum) and Tim Weston (Head of Design and Technology, Oakham School).
Launched in November, the Black+Blum Student Design Competition provided a ‘real life’ design challenge that could easily be done at home, either as an individual project, or one set by schools as remote classwork. The challenge enabled pupils to identify strengths in existing products, consider what makes a nutritional lunch, identify user requirements and develop ideas through sketches, 3D models and CAD.
“It was fantastic to see so much creativity from all of the young designers who took part,” says Dan Black. “As users of the products they were designing, they showed some truly fresh, innovative, and unique ideas. I was extremely impressed by the high calibre of all the entries, but the winning design stood out for the thorough research, concept development and presentation of final concept.”
Dana (from Wycombe Abbey), receives an iPad for her winning design, whilst runners up Freddie (St Hugh’s Prep School, Woodhall Spa) and Charlotte (Wycombe Abbey) both receive a range of products from Black+Blum.
“All of the pupils who took part should be incredibly proud of what they have achieved,” adds Tim Weston. “It is wonderful to see how they have risen to this design challenge, particularly given the difficulties of lockdown and home schooling, to showcase their remarkable talents. The future for design in this country looks positive – as I’m sure many of those who entered the competition will go on to have very successful careers.”
Given the success of the competition, Dan and Tim are already underway making plans to release the brief for next year’s challenge. “It is vitally important to give as many pupils as possible the chance to experience, and enjoy, design challenges,” conclude Dan and Tim. “We’ll be working on how we can encourage even more school children from across the country to take part – as competitions such as this are crucial for inspiring the next generation of designers and engineers – who will be vital in the future success of the UK’s economy.”
