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Ffres Awards
United Kingdom
FFres Awards winners 2005. From left: Fashion category winner Gwennan Davies (UWN) and finalists Lauran Brannigan (Coleg Sir Gar) and Jess Spernaes; textile category finalists Chris Garrad (UWIC), Sam Jones (Swansea Institute) and winner Hannah Webb (UWIC); Graphics category winner Evelyn Bracewell (Swansea Institute) with one of the judges, David Lea from Stills Design.
In 2006, the second year of the awards, the focus has moved away from fashion and textiles with the graphic design category working on a greater variety of briefs. A product design category has also been added, which means that additional universities and colleges can participate in the awards. Each category contains a choice of design briefs, which are set by Welsh companies in consultation with Design Wales. There will also be separate specialist judging panels for each category.
The annual awards start in May each year with a meeting where Design Wales advisors present the design briefs to representatives from the Welsh universities who will be entering students for the competition. In the October, there are seminars for students where they are introduced to the forecasted trends and also hear presentations from practitioners in their field. In the weeks following the seminars Design Wales advisors visit the participating universities to meet the students and review the work in progress of individual projects.
The deadline for submitting entries is the following February, and a maximum of fifteen entries in each category can be submitted by each university. From these, Design Wales advisors draw up a shortlist of entries for each category. The shortlisted entries are judged at a national final by a panel of industry professionals at an external venue. Each shortlisted student is allocated time to set up a display of their work prior to having a short, informal presentation and discussion with the judging panel. Following the presentations, the students leave their work for the panel to review and select the finalists. This first round of voting is based on verbal and visual presentation and the short-listed entries are displayed for the judges to cast their vote using coloured stickers (Red= 0 points, Yellow = 3 points, Green= 7 points). The finalists are the three entries per category that receive the highest score. In the second round, the judges select the Ffres award winners from the finalists, looking at the following criteria:
1. Is the design creative as well commercially viable?
2. Has the designer followed a structured design process?
3. Does it answer the design brief?
To measure the success of the awards both participating students and lecturers are asked to fill out an evaluation form at the end of the awards. The opportunity to work on real-life briefs, experience a professional interview situation and meeting people from industry has received positive feedback from both students and lecturers. There has been some negative feedback, mainly from students, about the lack of a cash prize for the winners.
The awards are continuing to be developed to further increase industry participation and in 2007 the winners will be presented at an evening event for the Welsh design industry. The winners will receive one week’s work experience within a trend prediction agency’s design office in
For further information about the Ffres Awards programme please contact Design Wales (info@designwales.org.uk).
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© Design Wales 2007
The Ffres Awards are an annual design competition open to 2nd and 3rd year students studying fashion, textile, products or graphic design in Wales (‘Ffres’ is Welsh for fresh). The awards are organised by Design Wales, with a design advisor from the relevant design discipline taking responsibility for each category. The aims of the awards are to:
- prepare students for working in industry by setting competitive real-life briefs to be presented to industry professionals
- encourage students to realise the importance of research to their projects
- encourage students to develop appropriate professional skills
- highlight the talent of future designers from
- encourage increased cooperation across design disciplines.
The awards began in October 2005 when in conjunction with the biannual trend prediction seminars for industry (see the Trend, Style and Colour case study in the SEEdesign Library), Design Wales introduced an annual student trend seminar covering the forecasted spring/summer and autumn/winter seasonal trends. To ensure that the students attending the trend seminar understood how to use the trend information and to highlight the importance of research, Design Wales advisors developed fictional companies and design briefs that were a reflection of current industry needs. To encourage cooperation across design disciplines the awards were open to fashion, textile and graphic design students with the briefs focusing on the fashion and textile industry. The judging panel was a mix of industry professionals from the three disciplines. The work of the finalists in each category was exhibited at the trend prediction seminar in March 2006, when the overall winners were announced.
