What is good design? This award offers new perspectives
The Australian Design Council has reinstalled the Design Impact Award. It matters more than ever before.
What is good design?
The Australian Design Council believes good design solves problems, and that great design prevents them.
The council put this into practice on Friday with the revival of its Design Impact Award, last issued in the ‘80s, and this year awarded to the Bega Circular Valley 2030 program.
The project aims to build a circular economy in the region with cross sector and community collaboration.
Barry Irvin AM, Bega Group executive chairman, says the award shows how design can solve both short and long-term problems. Good design, he says, begins with the end result in mind.
“We looked at the opportunities in the Bega Valley and what we thought we could do to truly make change. [We] began with systems design. So we actually looked at everything that was in the valley and then looked at how we could engage the entire region, and indeed people outside the region, to create a very ambitious change of making the Bega Valley one of the most circular valleys in the world. And we began by making sure we saw it [at] the end, which is what circularity is really about. So we designed every system so we could really affect a big change,” he says.
Irvin says winning the award - awarded as part of the Australian Good Design Awards Ceremony which commends some 30 categories across industrial, motoring, architectural, strategic and even policy design - demonstrates what is possible.
“What we continue to want to achieve with the Bega Circular Valley project is that this will be the test case for others to follow,” he says.
“[S]omething like the Impact award just lifts our profile. It’s important for us to make sure that the work we are doing is work that engages all three levels of government. So local council, state government, federal government, engages, corporate Australia, engages small and large business that engages the Indigenous community.
“The deep challenges that we have from all environmental, social, and economic perspectives, it’s going to really require collaboration like we’ve never seen before.”
Dr Sam Bucolo from the Australian Design Council says there are many misconceptions around design.
“I think this is [about] pivoting that narrative for what is design. There are great fashion designers, industrial designers, communication designers, and they all have a role to play, but they first of all have to actually understand the problem they’re working on that are of significance,” he says, adding that this has been the case for the Bega Valley project with designers from all fields using design to open up problem sets and create opportunities.
Australian Design Council member Dr Brandon Gien, an industrial designer and an adjunct professor of Industrial Design, says the award offers new perspectives.
“The Design Impact Award is really going to a business, to an organisation, in this case, an entire region. So it’s a different way of communicating what design can do. People often think of design as a new Apple iPhone or a car or a fancy widget or a beautiful interior of a building. Whereas this award was deliberately created to really recognise the role of design within a business and how that is actually transforming a business or an organisation,” he says.
Moving forward, the Australian Design Council, which last year received funding from inaugural patron Peter Freedman AM and operates as a not-for-profit industry body, wants to further integrate the principles of design into businesses around Australia and prove the opportunities design can add.
Gien believes Australia can be at the forefront of what design can be.
“When you talk about design as a profession, instantly people go to Scandinavia, there’s a culture, it’s in their blood. We want the rest of the world to look at Australia in a similar way … We are a design-led culture. We’re a design -led economy. And I think the work that Bega Valley is doing, we want that to be a benchmark for the rest of the world to look at and look at what’s going on down there and look at how they’re actually using design.”
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