RSA unveils 2010 winners of Design Directions award scheme

A service aimed at encouraging workers to leave the office at lunchtime and an advertising campaign aimed at discouraging teenage girls from shoplifting are amongst the winning projects in this year's Design Directions award scheme from the RSA.

Expert judging panels selected 31 winners from nearly seven hundred entries, with students competing across thirteen different briefs. Winning entries included 'Body over Autism' a woven textile garment that helps people suffering from sensory processing disorder cope with anxiety in public places and 'Parajam' a new way for the elderly to take pain relief through spreading a mixture of Paracetamol and Jam across bread or cakes.

Design Directions encourages designers in training to apply their skills to difficult social issues and this year resulting entries included proposals aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour by screening films in supermarkets car parks, and ideas to improve Cambridge road estate in Kingston through involving young people and children with improving their local spaces and environment.

The award scheme is an important part of the RSA’s Design & Society project that argues designers have a vital role to play today in making society more resourceful – helping close the gap between our everyday behaviour and the future to which we aspire.

For a full list of winners and details about the briefs, please visit the RSA Design Directions website.

Commenting on the winners, the RSA's director of design Emily Campbell said:

"The standard of entries was again incredibly high with the winners demonstrating once again their appetite for grappling with some of the more intractable social challenges in contemporary life and finding solutions that are thoughtful, design led and socially driven. The RSA is proud to honour these outstanding examples of ingenuity and judgement in young designers who continue the long history of our student design awards."

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