Each year, the Australian Good Design Awards recognises and celebrates some of the brightest young design minds in Australasia. Each year these brilliant designers continue to push the boundaries of design and challenge conventional thinking, to develop new and innovative ideas that help push our industry forward.

The Next Gen category was specifically created to inspire and support the next era of designers and to help foster a culture of design, innovation and creativity in the upcoming generations. Over the years, the Good Design Australia community has seen how these emerging designers often offer learnings and perspectives that can inspire those of all ages. 

For 2022’s award winner Kathy Ky, these lessons came when she embarked on her UNSW Bachelor of Industrial Design Honours Project to solve one straight-forward, yet inherently complex question: How do we control traumatic bleeding in emergency services and emergency scenarios?

The then 21 year old set out looking for answers, undeterred by the fact that she wasn’t a doctor and didn’t have a background in cardiology. 

“My project was so very technical and I found it challenging to grasp the science behind it, but being so young, I wasn’t so constrained by the rules or standards that you would follow when you’ve spent a lot longer in the industry,” says Kathy Ky, 2022 Good Design Award Best in Class Winner for Next Gen. 

“I had a fresh perspective that allowed me to seek out innovative solutions that hadn’t been considered by other people before.” 

The odds were stacked against her, but the emerging Sydney-based designer’s persistence and resourcefulness paid off. 

“I started reaching out to as many paramedics, trauma experts and other medical experts as I could, until I stumbled on the scientific paper proposed by the UN Institute in the US and their research became the skeleton of my project.” 

“The technology was developed by the institute but the concepts and aesthetics of the orbital and how it could solve the problem of traumatic bleeding in patients was a big part of my project – the Neural Tourniquet.” 

The Neural Tourniquet is designed for paramedics to use in emergency situations where rapid bleeding control is required to save lives in the critical minutes following a traumatic injury. The device uses TENS technology to stimulate the cervical vagus nerve, proven to stop uncontrollable bleeding in under a minute.

For the now 25-year-old, the Australian Good Design Award Best in Class win completely revolutionised her view on design, saw her land an Industrial Design role with Street Furniture Australia and has fuelled her drive to continue finding answers to big questions throughout her career. 

“Winning the Australian Good Design Award in the Next Gen category proved to me that I can challenge existing thinking and I’m able to translate my insights into real life projects that respond to real problems,” shares Kathy.

“I want to keep building on this momentum and gain as much knowledge and experience as I can before starting my own studio.” 

“If anyone is thinking of applying, I want to remind you to take opportunities when they come to you and seek out collaborations whenever you can – I wouldn’t have achieved all of this without doing so.” 

Only a few years earlier, Melbourne-based Industrial Design student, Ryan Tilley, used his own limited experience as the driver to challenge the standard of a global industry. It was on a summer study program in Singapore that the then 22 year old’s eyes were opened to the issues faced by people with disabilities or mobility issues. 

“I spent three days in a wheelchair myself while in Singapore and immediately saw just how many challenges these individuals face every day,” explains Ryan Tilley, 2019 Good Design Award Best in Class Winner for Next Gen. 

“Things as simple as people looking down on you when you’re trying to navigate food courts or crossing the road and the red man is flashing before you’ve even hit halfway and your shoulders are already burning.” 

“Coming from a technical background, my immediate thought was – Man, we can make these so much better”. 

Where others would have been deterred by the challenge at hand, it was ironically Ryan’s limited exposure to the healthcare and mobility industry that gave him the confidence to ‘jump straight into the deep end’ and design the Gecko Traxx – a portable and affordable wheelchair accessory that enables off-road access for manual wheelchair users. 

“I just approached it with youthful enthusiasm and probably came in a bit wide eyed as I’m not constrained by what’s already happened in the past,” shares Ryan. 

“There’s not been a lot of young people in the industry, so it’s been a welcomed change for all of our consumers.”

Since being named as a Good Design Award Best in Class Winner in 2019, Ryan has transformed his idea into a thriving business. Gecko Traxx was part of the founding range at Rove Wheelchairs, an organisation ‘committed to bringing cutting-edge designs and technology into wheelchairs and assistive technology products’. 

With a growing multidisciplinary team and support from the likes of Australian Paraolympian, Dylan Alcott, Ryan and his colleagues now have their eyes on the global stage. 

“Our focus at the moment is really on scaling and growing the current product that we have in the market, but we also have a new product that will be in the market in the next month or so and we’re getting ready to expand into the US.” 

“We want to be more than a wheelchair company and we want to be a global mobility company, so we’re also looking towards innovations such as power assist and how we can augment someone’s strength to make it easier for them to get around.” 

For Marcus Lee, winning the Australian Good Design Award Best in Class in the Next Gen category not only opened up doors for him in Australia, but catapulted his career to the other side of the globe. 

Marcus was named a winner in 2016 for his life saving dialysis machine, which helps treat people with kidney problems in remote areas. The project and his award helped him capture the attention of Apple recruiters from the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Recognising the achievements of our Next Gen Award Winners highlights the immense potential of emerging designers. Through their innovative endeavours, they not only impact local communities but also contribute to broader societal advancements. Their dedication serves as a testament to the transformative power of design in effecting positive change.

Judging is currently underway for the 2024 Awards, and Good Design Australia is proud and excited to continue recognising and supporting the talent of tomorrow. 

Click here to read more about the annual Awards.

In the dynamic and interconnected landscape of design awards, collaboration and shared knowledge are one of the fundamental pillars that can help drive innovation and progress. It’s why design promotion organisations worldwide recognise the importance of forming strategic partnerships to leverage localised knowledge and strengths, share best practice and collectively elevate the standard of design excellence. 

Good Design Australia (GDA), as one of the leading advocates for cross-cultural design collaboration, has forged several MOUs (Memorandums of Understanding) with design bodies across the globe – all who share the view that good design is at the core of innovation and that it can help improve society, the global economy, environment and culture for mutual benefit.

This includes a long-standing MOU with the Korean Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP) which was originally signed in 2005 and renewed in 2012. The MOU allows winners of the Australian Good Design Awards to also register for the Korean Good Design Award logo. A new partnership signed this year with the Design Business Chamber of Singapore (DBCS) provides Australian Good Design Award Winners with free entry into the Singapore Good Design (SG) Mark Awards.

GDA also recently renewed an MOU with the Japan Institute of Design Promotion (JDP) which was first signed in 2013. JDP, a Promotional Member of the World Design Organization (WDO), hosted the 33rd World Design Assembly in Tokyo last year. The three-day event welcomed some of the design industry’s brightest minds both in-person and online under the theme: Design Beyond. 

Amidst workshops, inspiring panels, WDO Board elections and future World Design Capital announcements, GDA sat down with JDP to renew an MOU that was first established in 2013. It strives to enhance the collaboration and discussion surrounding design evaluation and design promotion processes.

We caught up with Good Design Australia’s Chair, Dr. Brandon Gien to dive deeper into the power of GDA’s across-the-pond relationships.

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How do the MOUs aim to impact the international design community? How will they foster greater connectivity or help drive design innovation within the wider international design community?

One of the central themes in all our MOUs is the recognition of design excellence across geographic boundaries. It’s about helping to provide award winning designers and businesses in our respective regions with additional promotional benefits so that they can reach a wider and more diverse audience. 

We believe that design award bodies that recognise and endorse good design are a positive influence in promoting the value and importance of professional design in the development of products, services and our built environment.

Through these MOUs, we share a common aspiration to promote the importance of professional design and the role it plays in creating a better, more prosperous and sustainable future. 

The spirit of each MOU is also centred around the peaceful coexistence of our respective Good Design Award registered trademarks and the importance of respecting that each award body has a unique and differentiated pathway to promote and advance good design in our region and internationally. 

These MOUs also allow us to uncover emerging technology and design trends in our regions and to share this information e.g. What are the main design challenges facing Singapore at the moment and what can Australia learn from these? What societal factors are driving design trends in Japan and what insights can our design community back home gain from this knowledge? 

What mutual benefits does GDA anticipate from these MOUs and how does each organisation stand to benefit from this partnership?

Where possible, we hope to draw upon each other’s networks to take part as judges in our respective Good Design Award programs so that we can learn from each other and improve. 

What is the best way to recognise and promote good design? What does each body use as their criteria for good design? How can we learn from each other to improve our own design award programs and create an environment of shared knowledge and progress? 

Our definition of good design is constantly evolving to ensure it best reflects what is considered good design in today’s world. For example, 20 years ago, sustainability was rarely a requirement for a project to be deemed good design. Today, we know that sustainability and circular design needs to be baked-in to the project at the very beginning to produce the best possible outcome. Collaborating with our international partners allows us to ensure we are setting best practices for good design at an international level and driving progress at a much larger scale. 

Looking beyond the immediate terms of the MOUs, what is the long-term vision for these partnerships? How does GDA envision these collaborations evolving over the next decade?

By working together collaboratively, we hope to improve our systems and processes and collectively help raise the benchmark for good design in our region and internationally. The more we collaborate, the better we’ll be at doing what we do – all in the best interests of recognising, rewarding and celebrating design excellence. 

The really unique thing about these collaborations is that they allow us all to tell the stories of our Award Winners to a much broader audience and to help spread the good design message as far and wide as possible.

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The 2024 Australian Good Design Awards are now open, with submissions closing at midnight Friday 3rd May. Join the Design Effect movement and push not only the world of the design, but our society, environment and future forward.

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