Hasta La Ideas

Check out our selection of 42 Design Awards Videos chosen from over 250 submissions!!

Let’s face facts. Designers need to make movies.

It is impossible to compress the breadth and depth of a design into a single 500-word press release or a miniscule catalog blurb. (I’ve pored over the text and pictures on Herman Miller’s website and I still don’t really get the SAYL Chair. Does the back remind anyone else of Jelly Shoes from the 80s?).

Since the proliferation of the webcam, designers have no excuse. We live in an age where slightly insufficient blurbs can easily be paired with video clips that demonstrate the brilliance of designs. I’m not saying that designers no longer need to learn how to communicate verbally; just that video is an under-utilized way of efficiently conveying what something does and how it does it.

Which is why the Core77 Design Awards encouraged entrants to submit a short video testimonial along with the static images and text solicited by other award programs. And we weren’t disappointed; designers sent in over 250 videos! Independent of the judging, we put together a gallery of a few of our favorites ranging from the cinematic exploration of parallel lives to a full minute shot of two guys jumping on a chair.

Overwhelmingly, the videos provided insight not only into the designs they showed but also into the lives of the people who made them. Whether the creator was a fictional bike thief, a diabetic fashionista, a recovering cigarette addict, an origami-obsessed student, or a frustrated mom, it was exciting to see how personal experiences enriched and informed their work.

People often say that “designers are storytellers” but not all stories are verbal and the visual/kinesthetic thinkers attracted to design professions are sometimes ill equipped to transcribe their concepts and innovations into the written word. Not everyone can afford his or her own marketing department but most can pick up their Apple-product-of-choice and press “record.”

You can check out the Core77 Design Awards video gallery here!

And join us again in the next week as our Jury Captains continue to broadcast their results from around the world!

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