University of Derby product design student wins Royal Society of Arts Student Design Awards

Magdalena Boudova, University of Derby BA (Hons) Product Design student won at this year’s Royal Society of Arts Student Design Award for her project DOT-+SUM.

This year’s brief tackled a range of issues; from services for displaced people, active travel for the ageing population and economic security, to reimagining community spaces through food.

Magdalena’s project called DOT-+SUM; A Platform for joy, looked at how to unlock joy for people at train stations. It was a product and a system design for supplying users of public transport with information about the nature and state of the service in an engaging way, with the help of visual media.

Talking about her work Magdalena said: “Product design really opened up my eyes, I realised that design is so much more.

“It took me a while to settle on the final idea for the RSA project brief, but the inspiration behind my work came from Fireflies and Interactive Projection Mapping Installations. My favourite part of the process was compositing the presentation boards. I had a real blast designing the layout and playing with typograph. I would work on it day and night.

“Winning this competition is an amazing achievement, being able to receive an award for my project DOT-+SUM, shows the recognition of the work I have completed.” 

Terrence Watson, Senior Lecturer in Design, said: “I’m delighted but not surprised by Magdalena’s success in the RSA Student Design Awards this year, this is well deserved recognition of her talent as a Product Designer and her dedication to the subject. The DOT-+SUM project displays her ability to develop creative solutions to difficult problems and communicate them at a high level.

“Magdalena’s aim to bring ‘joy’ to the daily rail commute through a novel and dynamic communication system is the result of an intensive project that sifted through a number of alternative ideas. She synthesised concepts to develop the final outcome which achieves the ‘holy grail’ of product design in providing a simple solution to a complex problem while maintaining a human touch and a sense of fun.”

The RSA Student Design Awards is an annual competition for higher education students and recent graduates. Each year, the RSA challenges emerging designers to engage with a range of design briefs centred on social and environmental impact.

The awards have helped identify talented early career designers that have had a huge impact in the world, with over 100,000 students entering the competition since it began in 1924.

The Award Ceremony will take place online from 6:30pm on Thursday 30 July. To find out more visit their website https://www.thersa.org/action-and-research/rsa-projects/design/student-design-awards/winners