Student RSA Design Awards

• Todays talker was Rebecca Ford who is the assistant manager at the RSA Design awards.
• One key point she made were that the student awards are open to everyone (no specific discipline).
• The first half of her talk was about Design for social impact:
• They were founded in 1754, based in central London (Photo) and that the welcome the public to come and have a tour of their building.
• One example of design for social impact that she used was the invention of the chimney brush (Mr Davis,1806) this design changed the lives of child chimney sweeps as they no longer had to crawl from top to bottom of the chimney and would be able to clean with much more ease.
• RSA today, 21st Century Enlightenment.
• Some of the ‘fellows’ of the RSA include Stephen Fry  & Lily Cole.
• She then explained that they have a  monthly animation short that they release internally. She showed us an example of this and then confirmed that more of these were available to view on YouTube.
• Their website for reference is www.thersa.org
• Some more facts about the RSA are:
• RSA design awards 1924 – 2014, its the longest standing design awards for students.
• Some winners are: Tom Tobia (Interior Designer), Tracy Noules (Fashion Designer), Richard Clark (Global VP Nike), Hugh Moderage (IDEO) & Jonathan Ive (Apple).
• The RSA have made their briefs flexible so that they are able to suit/be interpreted to any design field.
• She asked the question: What are the boundaries of design (Their Ethos)? (Photo)
• 1) With great power comes great responsibility.
• 2) Good designers are more than just aesthetics. (Mind map – see photo)
• She then gave a brief overview of examples of previous briefs; Gentle Guider 2012, Donate at the gate 2011, In good hands 2014, WW 2014 & Decorate paints 2014.
• All of the briefs are available online to view and she advised that we are all welcome to apply and be involved in this exciting opportunity.
• Current Briefs for 2014/15 are;
• The Daily Diet Brief which I thought was interesting and will look into further (sponsored by shift design)
• Human Nature Brief.

Below are some images I took of the slides during the talk that include key information that was discussed, such as the briefs, about the company & contact information.