Design solutions come in many shapes and sizes and from all kinds of places. Representation, diversity and local talent are key elements to the Index Award celebration, which is why we’re looking far and wide for design to improve life – and luckily, we’ve got some help. Meet our thirteen talented design spotters who are bringing forward the undiscovered and underrepresented.
Can we combine the spatial with the digital? If you ask Blise, that’s the whole point! She’s a freelance digital designer based in Glasgow, Scotland, who researches the possibilities of spatial design within the digital, and her project Data Clouds explores this practice. She advises students from The Glasgow School of Art, where she graduated from, on ethical design and is part of the Scottish Communities Climate Action Network. By being a Design Spotter, Blise wants to highlight Scottish talent, lesser recognised ethnic groups and help make women more represented in the field of design.
How do you make a small, local town a tourist attraction? Ask our design spotter Emma Sloth, a Danish Graphic Designer and Illustrator based in Copenhagen. Emma’s graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and is fascinated and motivated by using motion design and animation to solve problems that matter. Oh, and regarding the small local town? Emma made an interactive app, that uses wayfinding to inspire creativity through task-solving, observing and exploring the urban space.
From Mexico to Denmark, from Architect to a Strategic Design and Entrepreneurship student. Our design spotter Gustavo relocated in 2020 from Mexico City to Copenhagen to expand on his already great experience with designing small to large scale projects. He’s especially proud of the Sores 818 project, a new pocket neighbourhood where apartment living meets shared public spaces in one of Mexico City’s oldest urban villages, Mixcoac. Before coming to Denmark, Gustavo did housing projects at the Buró de Arquitectur.
Within the fields of service design and design research, you’ll find Giyong. Originally from South Korea, he relocated to Helsinki, Finland to get his Master’s in Collaborative and Industrial Design at Aalto University. Giyong’s previously worked within areas of healthcare, tourism, disasters and future forecasting. He's really proud of the Busan wayfinding project, which established a user-centred guide system for tourists visiting his home town of Busan. He loves bringing forth design talent and strives to be an influential designer.
When Juliana was a child, she wanted to be an engineer, artist and president of her home country Colombia. She later realised that being a designer was the closest discipline to all of them. She is currently enrolled at the School of Architecture and Design in Bogotá at Universidad de Los Andes, where she’s also worked on a proposal to decontaminate the Atrato River. Juliana finds great potential in her fellow Latin America designers and believe the region’s diversity feeds its opportunity to design a positive change in society.
Liliana is a freelance design strategist based in both London and Berlin. She started out in the filmmaking industry 12 years ago, which would translate into a human-centred design-driven passion. Today, she combines service design, business innovation, and design research to develop insight-driven services and products for a variety of clients. Liliana truly values being part of the design community and has facilitated design thinking workshops in different industries. She loves seeing how culture, context, and business connect in a socially relevant manner.
During these uncertain times, being a design spotter has helped Lola to keep an optimistic perspective and stay reaffirmed on human ingenuity and the positive movements happening all around the world. Lola's been on a journey from her home country Spain across different European design collectives and now lives in Stockholm, Sweden. Here she works as an Industrial Designer and is also the Founder of the design collective OnMateria. She's recently been part of designing the GreenBox, a circular amenity kit for hotels, designed to help tackle the plastic waste generated by the hospitality industry.
In 2018, Meera took a leap of faith when she moved from Australia to Finland. Leaving behind a career as a women and children’s lawyer, she wished to channel her drive for creating change through the power of design. She’s now studying a Masters in International Design at Aalto University and has combined her two skills sets by founding Ground M, a studio that seeks to enhance the access and use of law and legal information. Being from a minority background herself, Meera is passionate about solutions that promote inclusivity and equality.
Mia truly believes in the ability of design and keeping up with design trends. She’s currently working at the Danish fintech start up MakeImpact, where she’s a product manager and assists with service design on an app where users can assess companies through their connections to the SDGs and make informed decisions on investments and shared values. She has a Master’s degree in Design Management from SDU and Designskolen Kolding. Mia loves seeing how design solves wicked problems and improves sustainability.
Biodiversity issues and our connection with nature are some of the key drivers to Mia’s work. Originally from Hong Kong, Mia now lives in Stockholm in Sweden where she’s exploring interdisciplinary practices and ways of communicating sustainability topics through design. Her catalogue Hope is an example of just that! As you’re glancing through the catalogue, you’ll see how home products are situated in an imaginative micro-utopia, each embodying qualities that influence the human-nature connection.
Woven textiles and the practice of hand-weaving are some of Millie’s greatest passions. She’s got a BA in Textile Design from University of Arts in London and has since then worked in the textile industry. Today she has her own studio, where she takes a biomimetic approach to design. You can see it in her Aesthetic Function project, where she took inspiration from the inner workings of the natural world. The intersection between design and science, nature and fabrics is something she continues to explore.
Over the last 15 years, Yen has been spotting design trends in the fashion, art and creative industries. From and based in Malaysia, he’s written work on design has spread all over Asia and he’s incredibly proud to be a curator and storyteller of great design. Yen wants to highlight designs that goes beyond things and materialism and is currently writing for magazines like Habitus Magazine, Design Anthologyand Art & Design.
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Image: Chase Clark
