Events
Anglepoise at New Designers 2023
Anglepoise thrives when supporting emerging talent, so we sponsored New Designers for another year. Attending the judging day (5th July) the team spent time with the future leading lights of British design. The event, located in London’s Business Design Centre, gives graduates and emerging designers to showcase their work and network with industry experts.
This years Anglepoise judges were – Managing Director Adam Wade, Senior Product Designer Tolu Falope, Head of Sales & Marketing Tajinder Leonard and Customer Experience Manager Ed Lanwarne – they were stunned by the quality of work and the professionalism in which they exhibited their ideas.
OUR ABANDON DARKNESS WINNER
Ellen Callaghan
We are delighted to introduce you to Ellen, our Abandon Darkness award winner at this years New Designers event. The Anglepoise judges were blown away by Ellen’s presentation of her outstanding project – Rae, which aims to offer home cervical screening without discomfort.
Her early research flagged that attendance of cervical screening had severely reduced since the Covid-19 pandemic and was therefore passionate about creating a solution which allowed people to get tested more comfortably. Ellen detailed her thorough research, which involved working alongside the likes of large charities and leading medical experts.
- What has been the most enjoyable part of the process leading up to New Designers?
I really enjoyed contacting experts, I managed to speak with 5 experts and its been great to know that this project is really meaningful in a real world setting and not just a university project. - How many ideas went to design heaven before landing on this concept?
I had 3 concepts that I was really thinking about, based around dexterity and disability friendly items like tampons, I spoke with a lot of my peers about my ideas on size and materials but they all appeared to be similar to this which is quite daunting, so I eventually landed on the design I have now. - In the design space in general, what would you say has been catching your eye this year?
It’s really nice to see the femtech space growing and seeing more products on the market specifically for women.
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- Marcus Dyson – What was the starting point for your project?
So I’m a keen cyclist myself, and when I was cycling to work on my placement last year I encountered a lot of close passes from drivers, and I realized that there was a major issue that needed to be resolved. I looked at different methods to help drivers keep enough space.
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- Sahaana Sainath – What advice would you have for someone who has just started their degree/taken an interest in design?
Its quite easy to feel let down when you see other people’s work, thinking that you’re not on the same level as them, what I’m doing doesn’t have the same complexity… But if you have a problem that you’re trying to focus on and a purpose for it, you will eventually get to where you need to be.
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- Zander MacKay – What was the biggest lesson learnt through this project?
Probably how difficult it is to make something simple. Weather is quite a complex thing, a lot of information to take in and trying to express that in a way that can be understood regardless of language barriers and literacy levels. It’s a very difficult thing to simplify without going too far the other way.
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- Phoebe Bamford – What was the starting point for your project?
So I’ve always been interested in renewable energy, so that was always something I wanted to go into. I was looking into different types of renewable energy and found that marine energy is the one of the smallest influencers in UK energy.
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- Sarah Brashaw – What would you say was the biggest learning point?
Its very difficult to embody symbolism through form, it presented many challenges. Especially when it came to the nest, how do you encourage the user to pick up the product in a certain way?
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- Jordan Davies – What have you enjoyed most during your project?
I really enjoyed engaging with the people who the concept is aimed at (lifeguards, water sports enthusiasts, marine biologists etc). This allowed me to design a system that would really make a difference environmentally and socially. Not just designing something for the sake of getting a good grade.
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- Sanjana Ramaswamy – What was the starting point for your project?
I love painting, it’s one of my main hobbies, but I realised there aren’t any adapted paint pallets on the market, so I wanted to create something. Research shows that only 12% of older adults paint and the main barrier is physical health. Vision and hand dexterity issues are really common in older age so I wanted to look into ways of making painting more accessible to them.
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- Rosie Lee Hood – What’s been your highlight of New Designers?
For me, the most enjoyable part of working on my project in the run up to new designers was getting the opportunity to meet so many amazing people. Materials suppliers and expert craftspeople who taught me so much about British wool but also other young designers and makers and seeing the really exciting work everyone was planning on taking!
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- Matthew Estevens – How many ideas went to design heaven before reaching this final design?
So this product actually started as a tree, so it was more functional and it was prescribed to people clinically but that turned out to be something I thought the users would want as opposed to what they actually need. And then it became a little tealight that would move into different rooms and then it eventually became a hybrid of the two.