Grants for the new designers

A number of companies, foundations and trade unions have awarded grants for some of Design School Kolding's newly graduated BA and MA designers. 14 grants for a total of 155,000 DKR.

Teknisk Landsforbund (2x2,500 DKR)
Cornelia Therkelsen, MA Design for Planet
Cornelia’s MA project is a display of the joy that mastering a craft can bring – when working to break consumer patterns, and in recognising the power of being able to concretise complex and abstract ideas through a sensuous product, focusing not only on physical durability but also emotional durability. In her project, Cornelia explores methods for changing the sole with the intent to prolong the life of the product as well as make disassembly easer once the product is no longer in use. A vision, which she due to her profound knowledge of leather techniques, is able to translate into a specific and sensuous concept at an advanced artistic level. Through a well-organised use of materials such as vegetable-tanned leather in connection with bio-based and biodegradable sole material, she has created a concept, which can potentially contribute to the creation of new service models.

Sara Lee Spanggaard Krog, MA Design for People
Sara set out to create air purifying wall panels, to be used in major cities, where a global population is experiencing huge problems with living, breathing the air surrounded by large industries, traffic, and gasses from the very buildings they work and live in. Using her textile construction knowledge, Sara used knit as a way to create expanded 3D surfaces as a ‘base’ for the technology used to clean the air. Through experiments and testing, she discovered that this mix of technology used, could also exterminate bacteria. Then the Corona-virus came, changing lives for all of us on a global scale! Sara, took a brave U-turn, asking the question, What if the technology I’m using to clean air, can exterminate not only bacteria, but the virus? Since that day, Sara has been designing, developing and testing different mask designs for fit and breathability. Developing systems, to test the impact of the air purification through the mask designs. Throughout this phase of her Masters Project, Sara has been collaborating with an expert professional team in England, and the next step for the team is to test the mask, using the actual Covid-19 virus. Sara has demonstrated how her curiosity, collaboration skills and knowledge as a new design professional can create value and potentially impact and change our future. This project is truly at the very core, Design for People.

Danske Kunsthåndværkere og Designere (5,000 DKR)
Leyla Melis Aslan, MA Design for Planet
Driven by a sincere social indignation, Leyla in her MA project engages in the fight for gender equality in the world of sports. Through thorough research and analysis she has uncovered the unbelievable difference between the possibilities for men and women in sports, and how media coverage, wage levels and rights favour men to a grotesque degree. By introducing female role models, who are consciously displayed in the heat of the struggle and not filtered through traditional, polished beauty ideals, Leyla wants to induce a sense of respect for the athletes’ fight on and off the court – and have a generation of young girls follow in their footsteps.

HK Privats Ophavsretsfond (2x5,000 DKR)
Jasmin Kharamani Madsen and Louis Hørsted Kocmick, BA Communication Design
In their joint BA project, Jasmin and Louis engage in the battle against minimalist design, which is said to represent the true, Danish Design DNA but does not leave much room for designs that are more lively, expressive and experimental. They have challenged the Danish establishment within graphic design – and themselves. They have written a manifesto, contacted a number of design companies and invited them to engage in dialogue as well as open call design briefs with the purpose of inspiring creativity and innovation to renew the Danish Design tradition. At the same time they themselves have experimented with and pushed the visual boundaries for anything from supermarket leaflets and typography to posters, merchandise and reports. Jasmin and Louis are familiar with their design heritage, which is what makes their project profound. They have received good response from several design agencies and international pioneers like David Carson. Jasmin and Louis are awarded the travel grant in the hopes that by visiting other European countries, they will continue to find the inspiration to renew the Danish graphic design scene.

ECCO
Lloyd Revald, BA Industrial Design
Simone Dormann Pedersen, BA Accessory Design
Cornelia Therkelsen, MA Design for Planet

Sydbank, travel scholarship (10,000 DKR)
Jaivardhan Singh Channey, MA Design for Play
Jai Singh Channey visited Design School Kolding as guest at our DesignCamp and from the very outset showed himself to be a wonderful student. He chose to complete his Master’s Programme here, and as one of the first Design for Play students he distinguished himself as a true friend of the school, contributing to its social life and with his skills at Digihub. His MA project was a tour-de-force, which he completed with skill and fortitude. He combined all of his new skills in a complex and technologically challenging task that combined the best of India with the best of Denmark. He is an example to us all.

Gudrun og Erik Kauffeldts Fond (4x 10,000 and 3x 20,000 DKR)
Exequiel Cantarutti, MA Design for People
In a world where the sexuality of people with intellectual disabilities is often seen as a stigma and the fear of care takers (parents and social pedagogues) causing a lack of support and convenient sex education, Exequiel Cantarutti, in his MA project, displayed a special thrive to contribute to a more inclusive society having a point of departure on the challenges that people with intellectual disabilities experience in everyday life. With this ambition throughout his MA project, Exequiel worked on how social design can identify and help to support sexual learning and self-exploration obstacles in people with intellectual disabilities by following a participatory design approach. Exequiel explored this topic with a thorough and extensive literature work study and through engaging with different types of stakeholders such as people with ID, social pedagogues, sex advisors, designers, and entrepreneurs, at the same time accompanied by excellent design skills. The outcome of the process is a conversational kit that fosters different types of dialogues about masturbation, fluids, and differentiation between public and private spaces among people with intellectual disabilities, social pedagogues, and sex advisors. This conversational kit serves as an open-source kit available to relevant professionals all over the world.

Georgina Norris, MA Design for Planet
With a terrier’s determination, Georgina has sought to understand on a systems level, what the current textile industry in circular transition looks like, in order to identify strategic entrance points for design. In her MA project she brilliantly exemplifies, how design brings user relevance to a regenerated fibre material through artistic nerve and aesthetic competences in composition, pattern and colour. Furthermore, through her Art-Panels service systems concept, she demonstrates an ability to design for and in a real-life circular economy.

Karen Juhl Petersen, MA Design for Play
Throughout her studies, Karen Juhl Petersen has been investigative, playful and experimental, which has resulted in strong design projects and profound design skills. In her MA project she links her competences in play design with her background in textile de-sign and creates a world of playful textile objects to support human interaction. In her project, Karen recognises and acknowledges children’s ability to be curious and creative and use the potential of materials, and she applies these insights to challenge grown-up habitual thinking. Her ability to identify overlooked design opportunities and bring them into play in a new context cements Karen’s potential as a play design ambassador that we can all learn from.

Nathalie Hauser, BA Accessory Design
With her BA project ”Bags and the didactics of gender norms” Nathalie displays a signifi-cant level of energy in terms of mastering the techniques and methods of her trade while also demonstrating a high level of artistic skill. Focusing on the body and semiotics she translates the techniques and material understanding of the leather trade into a complete and sensuous bag collection with a unique and gripping form language that holds powerful references to Surrealism. A collection that dissolves the classic form language of the bag and hence positions itself as critical of the continued binary gender perception and how this is produced and reproduced in the way we as human beings express and interpret social code.

Maja Ibsen Brammer, BA Industrial Design
Maja takes great interest in projects for special user groups, which her bachelor project compellingly demonstrates. Here, she designed a user-friendly asthma inhaler for children displaying her flair for and understanding of ethnographic methodology. She has a keen eye for the good insights, and shows that she is truly capable of extracting the essence from her research as the basis of her design process.

Karla Werner Zeuthen BA Fashion Design
With her BA project ” Untitled (A Collection Made According to the Laws of Chance)”, Karla gives her suggestion for sublime and aesthetic fashion as long-lasting design. Inspired by Dadaist Jean Arp, Karla unfolds her own aesthetics and challenges users to break with a non-sustainable industry. Based on acquired competences and methods she incorporates all elements of her BA training, from print in the first semester to form giving, colour, methodology and insights from her internship. Karla brings all of her knowledge into play in this project. Convincingly and playfully she unites the complexity between surface and form in a unique collection.

Emilie Palle Holm, MA Design for Play
In an almost virtuoso display of talent, Emilie demonstrates in her BA project that she masters all of the techniques and methods of the textile trade at an extremely high level artistically and professionally: She brings colour, ornamentation, techniques and materials into play in a powerful collection based on the phenomenon of ‘optical illusion’. Emilie’s intention with the textiles is to create an experience-based exhibition that aims to ‘re-teach’ the audience the art of wonder, to not always trust what they see, and not least, what quality textiles are and can be. In doing so she moves focus from the typical exhibition framework, which keeps the viewer at a distance and unable to touch the exhibited objects, to a situation, which allows her audience to be physically and sensuously involved and able to interact with the textiles.

Danmarks Nationalbank (25,000 DKR)
Frederikke Ryhl Toft, MA Design for Play
Frederikke Ryhl Toft has made a visionary MA project, which demonstrates her profes-sional energy and empathy towards the needs of users. The project is carried forward by a desire to create a holistic experience for new as well as experienced prosthesis users, recognising that this kind of transition involves a physical healing but very much so also a mental healing process. By including the users in choices of aesthetics and style, Frederikke seeks to strengthen the users’ bodily and mental relationship with their prosthesis to make the personal transition easier. In an exemplary manner Frederikke has demonstrated how she is able to combine her competences within materials and aesthetics with a user-involving design process. She has developed playful approaches, which in different ways invite users to share stories of what it’s like to live with a prosthesis. Frederikke is able to use her professional skills to engage the prosthesis users to share their challenges as well as their dreams and desires and use this information to design new services for personalized leg prostheses. Frederikke has collected knowledge from relevant players in a structured process and has entered collaborations that make her design solution most relevant because it applies – with great empathy – the possibilities of digital technology to develop and produce leg prostheses that consider the physical, intellectual and emotional aspects. Hence, the project is not only relevant for prosthesis users, it also adds great value for the collaboration partners. Frederikke combines her competences in accessory design with her profession as a play designer and excels by contributing to the field of social design while also encouraging a more sustainable approach to prosthesis design. Therefore we are very happy and proud to award this grant to Frederikke Ryhl Toft.