New Designers returned to Islington’s BDC this summer to host the cream of the UK’s graduate design crop. At 31 years of age, the show is a well-established launchpad for creatives, and this year’s edition saw over 3000 emerging talents engage an industry audience of around 15,000.
Few exhibitions rival the youthful enthusiasm on display at New Designers. Chiefly comprising final-year portfolios from colleges and universities across the nation, the show is a unique recruitment and promotional opportunity for its student exhibitors, and has been responsible for introducing many of them to the commercial world over the years.
The multi-disciplinary show is divided into two parts, which tend to straddle the end of June and the start of July. The latter features a strong furniture component, with students from established institutions in the field including Bucks New, Nottingham Trent and Sheffield Hallam universities rubbing shoulders with the likes of Plymouth, Northumbria, Edinburgh Napier, Brighton and Sussex universities, and Stratford’s Building Crafts College.
The specialist BA Furniture course at High Wycombe’s Bucks New University is shortly to be subsumed into a wider design curriculum, but its New Designers swansong is impressive. Presenting projects developed alongside industry partners Ercol, Heal’s, and the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation, highlights include Pip Jay King’s Nidum table triplet and Jack Hazell’s industrial wardrobe.
“We are proud of our vehement championing of a process of design through making,” comments course leader Fiona Davidson. “In a world where empirical design skills are too often neglected in favour of the seductive and often naive or inappropriate use of CAD skills alone, Bucks’ BA Furniture students are well placed to succeed – they know how to make things.”
This hands-on approach is evident across the floor, and within the One Year On feature, a curated selection of over 60 entrepreneurs in their first year of business.
Furniture News’ June and July issues featured the work of two of the participants – cabinetmaker Charles Dedman and artist Sarah Christensen. Sarah, whose eye-catching contemporary Foya cabinet combines yellow acrylic and fumed oak, explains how she quit her previous day job to pursue a freelance design career.
Indeed, throughout the fair, the students present are under no illusion that a life in the creative industries is going to be easy. Whilst some of the more glamorous stands are paid for by the institutions represented, many others are funded by the students themselves.
Either way, the attitude of the majority of exhibitors tends towards genial openness – these young designers are well aware that, in a way, they are selling themselves as much as their products.
As such, there’s a palpable energy throughout the show despite the high temperatures outside the building. The participants recognise the importance of putting themselves in front of so many influential visitors, and are thankful of the opportunities that New Designers provides – and those lucky enough to be recognised as winners of the event’s various awards enjoy even greater fame.
Camberwell College of Arts’ Selce Studio wins the John Lewis Award for Design and Innovation for its parallel slots system and shelving design, a simple modular system designed to adapt to any interior, netting the team £1000 and the opportunity to meet the retailer’s head office team to discuss their product and design ambitions.
Matthew Pope of Nottingham Trent University wins the show’s 100% Design Award for Addax, a funky modular sofa with interchangeable sections. The prize is exhibition space within the Emerging Brands section of 100% Design 2016. He responds: “I can’t believe this is happening, it has given me the drive and resolve to pursue a career in furniture-making.”
Isobel Dennis, director of show organiser Upper Street Events, sums up the show’s overall contribution: “New Designers remains the UK’s most important exhibition for emerging design. It is imperative that we continue to nurture the future talent that comes through UK’s art and design education, so that Britain’s world-leading creative industries can continue to flourish.”
Next year’s New Designers will take place from 29th June to 1st July (Part 1), and from 6-8th July (Part 2).
