Last night saw the winners announced for New Designers Part 2. Held at Islington Business Centre, the show celebrates 25 years this edition. Tortie Hoare won this year’s BDC New Designer of the Year award for her spectacular collection of eco-friendly ‘French armour’ inspired leather furniture. Each piece was carefully crafted and a unique exploration of the boiled vegetable tan leather process.

Vibrant coloured fabric print combined with the bark-treated leather represented the ethos of the Butterfly World Project, St Albans, with whom she worked alongside in order to complete her award winning chair. Tortie has developed her furniture with this medieval process that allows the leather to stiffen enough to create structure. As a result, her extremely contemporary and innovative final collection wins her £2,000 plus additional benefits.

The BDC New Designer of the year Runner Up is Kevin Scott from De Montfort University for his project ‘Collapsible Bicycle’. Kevin’s aim was to find a solution to bike security in places such as the city by utilizing the existing environment. e.g. around lamp posts. His unique bicycle design impressively folds in half around the post and is secured neatly with a bicycle lock. The sectional folding support tubes are quick and easy to reassemble with a winch and a series of tension cables inside the tubes that are connected to the front of the bike. The bike works out at a cost of under £500 and is a truly unique and an extremely effective product.

The winner of The 100% Design Award, James Shaw, focused his project ‘Socket Light and Spun’ on keeping the tradition of metal spinning alive. His metal spun objects are simple but at the same time beautiful. His award was for three powder coated everyday household objects; a table, a dustpan and brush and a ball joint lamp. His pieces have a strong use of industrial materials and hold a great nostalgic quality within them.

Alison Mehta won The Hallmark Cards Award for her great typographic and packaging solutions. For her award winning project, Alison has created a giant pop-up book with the help of fellow student Ian Rich to communicate the variety of opportunities that the website lastminute.com has to offer. The visual pop up book is visualized to be located in high footfall places such as city squares, to attract people and to engage with the public.

Rich Pearson from Sheffield Hallam University, was the winner of The Virgin Atlantic Airways Award. His project titled ‘Challenging Consumption’ has a gripping sustainable manifesto that is followed through with a great passion and designer’s eye. Rich Pearson has up-cycled materials and reprocessed waste into objects that were previously highly commercialized, into something that helps financially with an economic benefit. For example Rich has created a quirky watch face from a milk bottle top.

Yui Waraporn, winner of The Sky Award approached her project ‘Second Life’ in a creative way that could be very applicable across multiple areas. The Unique lamp is made of 160 recycled water bottles and cable ties and has a fundamentally green ethos. Yui used her own personal upbringing and perspectives on sustainability to inspire her award-winning piece, successfully highlighting the excessive consumption of Western society today.

UCA Rochester were the winners of The New Designers Best Stand Award. Their approach to displaying their BA (Hons) Visual Communication course is simple yet quirky and really brings the students’ ideas to life. In particular, the stand highlights well the connection between initial sketches and ideas to their final computer-generated imagery. The aim of the stand is to display their students’ talent as artists, as well as their technical skills. Not only was the stand eye-catching, but it represented visual communication in a very unique way.

Winner of the The New Designers One Year On Award Part 2 is Hannah Davies. Possessing a love of nature, Hannah continually develops intricate illustrations inspired by natural forms. The collection has a penchant for patterns built upon layers of textures formed by adorable charms such as horseshoes, flowers, umbrellas and exotic birds. The hand-drawn playful images provide a whimsical twist alongside the kaleidoscope of tropical colours that are reworked in Photoshop and transferred onto fabrics. Pen and ink work is used to form a splash of patterns, drawing inspiration from her imagination and dreams.

New Designers
Tortie Hoare
Kevin Scott
Alison Mehta
Yui Waraporn
Rich Pearson
James Michael Shaw
Hannah Davies
UCA Rochester

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