#HTE

Announcing the Design for Social Impact Honorees for the 2016 Core77 Design Awards

Perhaps the most important aspect of design is its ability to change existing paradigms and alter established ideologies—both on a cultural and societal level. Design, in general, possesses a tremendous capacity for global improvement—be it for environmental, humanitarian or social causes. This idea of designing for the betterment of our world, both on a micro and macro scale, has become a pillar of contemporary design and a promising step in the right direction. To celebrate this, for our Design for Social Impact category, we asked our entrants for “projects specifically designed to directly benefit social, humanitarian, community or environmental causes.”

Leading our Design for Social Impact category was Emily Pilloton, Founder of Project H, with John Bielenberg, Partner at Future Partners and Maria Guidice, VP of Experience Design at Autodesk rounding out her Jury Team. The team’s principle judging criteria were: Impact, Authenticity and Craft.

In addressing the honorees, Emily Pilloton admired that, in both the Student and Professional categories, the winners were “unexpected,” adding that “they were both really surprising and delightful and came from the heart. They felt very genuine, scrappy and highly successful.”

John Bielenberg continued: “The ones we selected combat this idea of design elitism. This was inclusive design.”

Maria Guidice noted that the entries represented design as a democratic act. “Using very human-centered design techniques that can be applied and shared by anybody. You don’t need a degree to be creating these amazing solutions,” she said. 

“Maybe that’s the greatest act of design for social impact: design doesn’t just belong to designers,” concluded Emily. “The things that we saw that we were so wowed by actually came from non-design offices.”

Core77 would like to express our deepest gratitude to the entire Design for Social Impact Jury Team for recognizing the following projects: