Dutch Design Awards

The international jury has chosen designer Femke Herregraven and her entire portfolio as the winner of the MINI Young Designer Award. The international jury appreciates her approach in which she combines her work as a graphic designer with the attitude of a journalist. The social and political context in which she places her work, achieves the jury’s special recognition.

With the presentation of the Mini Young Designer Award to Femke Herregraven, the jury rewards the designer’s subtle and intelligent activism. Herregraven uses graphic design in a journalistic way to explore and question society and the power structures therein. She works in a thorough and restrained manner, which increases the effectiveness. Her designs have been worked out carefully: a successful combination of presentation and content.

MINI ENCOURAGES YOUNG TALENT
MINI Netherlands has in 2011 adopted the MINI Young Designer Award for a period of three years. An award that suits the young car brand excellenty. MINI looks forward, evolves and remains true to its British design roots. Originality fits the British brand like a glove. It produces challenging creations in an ever-changing world. MINI congratulate Femke Herregraven wholeheartedly with her ​​award and wishes her a year of pleasant driving in the MINI Roadster.

With The Incredible Shrinking Man, artist, researcher and designer Arne Hendriks makes a bold statement. His alternative view of an improved world won him the Future Concepts Award Dutch Design Awards last weekend in Eindhoven.

50 CENTRIMETRES

People are getting increasingly larger, with the result that we need more energy, more food and more space. But what if this trend is reversed? What if humanity shrinks instead of grows? The Incredible Shrinking Man is a speculative concept by Arne Hendriks about what happens when humankind would just be 50 centimetres tall.

BOLD STATEMENT
Hendriks shows what thinking from a radically different perspective can produce. The Incredible Shrinking Man can be read as a manifesto that raises questions about societal issues at a global level.

Through boundless out-of-the-box thinking, he questions the tendency to make everything bigger and introduces man as the modifiable factor rather than his surroundings. Hendriks thus makes a bold statement in which the world is not improved by growth but by shrinkage. The Incredible Shrinking Man is a positive research experiment that appeals directly to the imagination.

Construction firm Heijmans is the winner of the Best Client Award 2013. On Saturday, October 19, the company received the award during the annual presentation of the Dutch Design Awards in the Klokgebouw in Eindhoven. This special prize is a reward for good clientship in which the value and sustainability of the relationship between the designer and the business sector are of paramount importance. The jury praised the crossover projects of Heijmans, which have come into being through the cooperation with specialists from various design disciplines. Certainly within the construction industry, this is a refreshing approach that deserves more attention.

JURY STATEMENT
The jury report underlines the fact that Heijmans involves various bureaus and design disciplines at an early stage in the tendering procedure. These collaborations are crucial to come to the right solutions. Recent examples include the Smart Highway (with Daan Roosegaarde a.o.) and the Militair Museum (with Kossmann.dejong a.o.). Heijmans also built the distinctive ‘Blob’ in the centre of Eindhoven (with Arno Pronk a.o.).

This company shows a clear vision of the future and succeeds in using it to innovate and create new opportunities. Thanks to the cooperation with Dutch designers, Heijmans encourages its own creative industry, meeting the demands and requirements of the area of specialisation. Especially in the construction sector, this refreshing approach deserves more attention.

Other finalists this year were Gispen and the Oogziekenhuis Rotterdam. The jury was comprised of Antoine Achten (De Kemp Rdam), Pieter Aarts (Tam Tam), Rita van Hattum (BNO) and Renee Wever (TU Delft).
BEST CLIENT AWARD
With the Best Client Award, DDA provides a platform for excellent relationships between clients and designers. Good clientship allows the creative process the space it needs and increases the value of design for the organisation. An independent jury of managers and professionals from the field selected the winner from a shortlist of three candidates.
The selection criteria for assessment cover the entire professional collaborative process between designer and client. Major criteria are: the way of selecting and briefing a suitable agency, providing space for creativity, the positioning of design in the company, the way in which design is linked to strategic goals and the ultimate guarantee of the results in the organisation.