Global winner announced

Moipone, the global winner

At the grand final in Goa last week, the global winner of the SDC competition was announced as Moipone Qekisi, from South Africa. Moipone joined all the finalists on a trip of a lifetime to India, where they met with the judges to discuss their use of colour in their designs, as well as their aspects of sustainable thinking. We are indebted to the judges for their expert input and inspiration that they offered to all the finalists.
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Moipone's prize included a cheque for (the equivalent of) £1000, along with the Veronica Bell Trophy, presented on behalf of the family of the late Dr Veronica Bell, a past-president of the SDC, to acknowledge excellence in the field of colour and design.

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Other winners included Nancy Taplin from the UK as the first runner up, and Denise Wong from Hong Kong as the second runner up. Moipone, Nancy and Denise all were presented Pantone Colour Viewers as part of their prize. Angelina Anderson (Australia), Nabil Hasan Khan (Bangladesh) and C S Balajee (India) were also commended by the judges.

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SDC president Mike Bartle with (L-R): Nancy, Moipone and Denise

Chair of the judging panel, Latika Khosla, commented, 'The winners were chosen on the basis of how true they were to their original ideas; how closely they integrated the idea of sustainable design into the project; and most importantly the ones that in future would inspire a whole lot of us to be touched by colour design.'

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The judging panel included (pictured in the front row, L-R): Sue Williams, colour consultant and immediate past-president of the SDC; Latika Khosla, design director of a Mumbai-based trend consultancy and Asia Pacific chair of the Color Marketing Group USA; and Savio Jon, a fashion designer based in the state of Goa. Also pictured in the front row is SDC president, Mike Bartle, who announced the winners at the awards dinner.

The finalists are pictured (L-R): Erika Neumayer (USA), Denise Wong (Hong Kong), C S Balajee (India), Nadia Munir Khan (Pakistan), Nancy Taplin (UK), Angelina Anderson (Australia), Moipone Qekisi (global winner from South Africa), Nabil Hasan Khan (Bangladesh), Bijal Vora (India) and XiYue Zhao (China).

It was such a wonderful occasion to have all the finalists present which was made possible thanks to the generosity of our sponsors. The grand final of the design competition was sponsored by VeriVide and Pantone, and the awards dinner sponsor (where the winners were announced) was sponsored by Clariant. Each of the finalists also received gifts from Pantone Asia and SDC India.

More photos and feedback about their time in Goa from the finalsts to follow.

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by CMcN

Grand final in Goa!

Two weeks today, the winner of the SDC global design competition 2009 will be announced in India. All 10 finalists will travel to Goa, representating their country in the grand final. In line with the rules of the competition, the host country may put forward a finalist from each of its SDC regions, with both Mumbai and Tirupur being represented. Let us introduce the finalists and their work!

AUSTRALIA
Angelina Anderson, TAFE NSW Sydney Institute











BANGLADESH
Nabil Hasan Khan, BGMEA Institiute of Fashion and Technology










CHINA
XiYue Zhao, Jiangnan University











HONG KONG
Wong Chau-Hung (Denise), Hong Kong Design Institute










INDIA (Mumbai)
Bijal Vora, Nirmala Niketan College









INDIA (Tirupur)
C S Balajee, PSG College of Technology











PAKISTAN
Nadia Munir Khan, Iqra University










SOUTH AFRICA
Moipone Qekisi, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Technikon








UK
Nancy Taplin, Colchester School of Art and Design










USA
Erika Neumayer, Dominican University in Chicago










For the first time in the history of SDC global design competitions, the brief has called for more than a creative use of colour. This year, students from regions around the world were also invited to incorporate sustainable thinking into their fashion or textile designs. Encouragingly, the designers of tomorrow took on this challenge with vigour – with evidence that many of the students are indeed clued up in terms of sustainability with some bright, new ideas being proposed.



On 25 June, each of the finalists will have the opportunity to meet with the panel of judges and have a chance to convince them that their approach to colour and sustainability is worthy of the accolade, the SDC Colour Design Award 2009. The global winner will be announced at the awards dinner on 26 June and will receive £1000 and the Veronica Bell Trophy (pictured).
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by CMcN

SDC global design competition: UK final

Nancy Taplin, of Colchester School of Art (pictured back row, third from left), was one of six finalists to beat over 80 students from around the country to make it through to the UK final of our global design competition last Friday in Bradford. At the awards dinner on Friday night, she was announced as the UK country winner.
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Earlier in the day, the six UK finalists met with the judges to discuss colour and sustainability in their designs (as per the brief). Impressed by the level of the entries, the judges (L-R pictured in front row) – Natasha Kerr (textile designer), Malcolm Campbell (chair) (Holland & Sherry) and Allanna McAspurn (Made-By) – had a tough time choosing a UK winner. Of the winner's work, they commented, 'Nancy used digital printing for her fabrics, with patterns that were designed, scaled and cut in a way that ensured little or no wastage of fabric.'

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Each of the students' entries who made it through to the UK final are profiled here, some of which will now also have a chance to be showcased at Graduate Fashion Week in collaboration with Fashioning an Ethical Industry.
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LONDON: Nancy Taplin, Colchester School of Art

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MIDLANDS: Samantha Metcalf, Loughborough University
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N ENGLAND: Judith Nunn, University of Huddersfield

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N IRELAND: Aiofe Twomey, National College of Art and Design

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SCOTLAND: Alice Snedden, Edinburgh College of Art
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W ENGLAND,S WALES:Harriet Curtis,Winchester School of Art

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All the finalists were present at the awards dinner, where they were presented with a gift from the NCS Colour Centre by the SDC president (pictured below).

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Nancy will now go forward, along with the other country finalists, to the grand final in India at the end of June where the winner will be announced on 26 June in Goa (which coincides with the SDC conference, with the theme of sustainability). The details of the 10 country finalists will be announced soon.

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by CMcN

Music and colour as compositions

Image (c) Kevin Laycock

Since the time of Aristotle – who famously ascribed colours to the individual notes of the music scale – artists, writers and musicians have explored the relationship between music and visual perception. One such artist is Kevin Laycock, a lecturer at the School of Design at the University of Leeds, who in his previous work engaged a rigorous approach to colour theory (see his gallery in issue 1 of the SDC online journal Colour: Design & Creativity here).

In his new artworks, he has produced a show that aligns the theory of music with the colour scale. The exhibition entitled entitled ‘Collision’ features abstract paintings and digital projections, produced with the composer Michael Berkeley. Kevin’s visuals will form a digital wallpaper based on the formal elements of composition found in the accompanying musical scores before the composer replies in turn with four electronic responses – his first serious compositions for electronic and electro-acoustic instruments.

Michael Berkeley explains, ‘Kevin painted several oils but also decided to create computer-generated patterns to rhythmic and individual lines in several of my pieces. The work, which lasts 45 minutes, can be played with live musicians or recorded sound but, either way, the pieces are linked and surrounded by new electronic sounds created by me in response, as it were, to Kevin’s response to the original pieces.’

The live premiere of Collision takes place on Sunday 26 April as part of Fuse Leeds. The exhibition then continues at Gallery Oldham, Oldham, until 27 June 2009.

by CMcN

SDC global design competition 2009

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Colourful designs - but are they sustainable?

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The SDC is once again calling undergraduate talent in fashion and textile design around the world to enter for the SDC Colour Design Award 2009. With regional heats to be held in Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, South Africa, UK and USA, this global competition will see each country finalist taking part in the grand final judging. A final shortlist of three students will then be invited to Goa, India for the announcement of the global winner on 26 June 2009.

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The competition brief calls for the creative, imaginative and original use of colour in either fashion or textiles. A new aspect for this year’s competition is the requirement to incorporate sustainable thinking into the designs. The issue of sustainability, while not new, still requires investigation and development particularly in regards to the textile industry, and so it is hoped that by incorporating this element into the design competition, participants will be able to contribute both to their own learning and to the wider global debate taking place.

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Although sustainability is a new aspect for this year's competition, it is clear it is something that students are already considering; in fact, a 2008 competition finalist Casey Bianco from Virginia Commonwealth University, USA (you can see Casey and her designs pictured in this post) had this to say on the matter:

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"In order to make the fabrics in my designs eco-friendly, I use nano-technology to print on cotton fabrics. With sustainability, conservation of water is extremely important. In printing and dyeing textiles, water is essential, and lots of it. I find this nano-printing technique extremely valuable because it does not require water for rinsing. It is a pigment-based process that works on a nano-partical level. These colorants, developed by Yuhan-Kimberly, do not require the fabrics to have any special coating or treatment to prepare them for printing. It uses a dry heat curing process. Because it works on the nano level, it produces a very thin coating of colour on the surface of the fabric, which does not dramatically change the hand of the fabric; the fabric stays soft. As current research has discovered, this process has best results with cotton and cotton rich blend fabrics."

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Entries for the 2009 competition are already being considered for the heat in the USA, with the finalist being the winner of the product design category in the AATCC’s design competition. Entries are now being prepared for submission in all SDC regionals and affiliates worldwide. Details of the various regional judging events include:
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Pakistan: 14 March in Lahore and Karachi
India: 28 March in Mumbai
South Africa: 20 March in Durban
Australia: 7 April in Melbourne
Hong Kong: 24 April in Kowloon
China: by 30 April in Beijing
Bangladesh: tbc
Sri Lanka: tbc
UK Midlands Region: 4 March in Loughborough

UK London Region: 10 March in London
UK Northern Ireland Region: 7 March in Belfast
UK North of England Region: 12 March in Bradford
UK Scottish Region: tbc, in Edinburgh
UK West of England and South Wales Region: tbc, in Tiverton

UK final: 24 April in Bradford

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The global winner will receive the SDC Colour Design Award, with a cash prize of £1000, plus a trophy and a prize for the winning college. For more details, and to download all the relevant documents, visit: www.sdc.org.uk/members/competitions.htm

*Deadline for submission of entry forms - end of February 2009*

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by CMcN

Playlist

The final 'Top 10' spectrum of songs that was played today amongst lots of colour chatter was as follows:

1. red - 99 red balloons, by Nena
2. orange - Frozen orange juice, by Peter Starstedt
3. yellow - Yellow Submarine, by The Beatles
4. green - Green Door, by Shakin' Stevens
5. blue - Mr Blue Sky, by ELO
6. purple - Start wearing purple, by Gogol Bordello
7. black - Supermassive black hole, by Muse
8. white - White wedding, by Billy Idol
9. brown - Brown-eyed girl, by Van Morrison
10. gold - Good as gold (stupid as mud), by Beautiful South

If you missed the show, you can catch the repeat at 9am tomorrow or 12 noon on Sat 17 Jan at: www.bcbradio.co.uk

by AnikE

Top 10 songs featuring a colour

The first entry for the year is appropriately my first entry for the colour blog. The SDC and the Colour Experience will be talking to our local radio station Bradford Community Broadcasting (BCB) tomorrow at 12 noon to promote The Colour Experience Project.

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As part of the show, we’ve been asked to give our top 10 favourite tracks, so of course we couldn’t miss this opportunity to pick songs with colour in the title. This has actually caused as much enthusiasm in the office as the broadcast itself, with much debate as to what should be included in the playlist. So much so that the SDC staff were willing to share their personal favourites, a selection of which are included below:

Anonymous 1:

1. Purple Rain – Prince
2. Certain Shade of Green – Incubus
3. Paint It Black – Rolling Stones

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Anonymous 2:

1. 99 Red Balloons – Nena
2. Blue Monday – New Order
3. Ruby Through The Looking-Glass – Tori Amos

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Anonymous 3:

1. Profondo Rosso [remix] - Goblin
2. In The Court of the Crimson King - King Crimson
3. Evergreen - Mostly Autumn

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Anonymous 4

1. Into the White - The Pixies
2. Green Gloves - Tha National
3. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt 1 - The Flaming Lips

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Anonymous 5 (NB all covers)

1. Fields of Gold - Maxi Priest
   
2. Over The Rainbow - Eva Cassidy
   
3. The Rose - Westlife

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Anonymous 6

1. Mr Blue Sky - ELO
   
2. Back in Black - AC/DC
   
3. Lilly the Pink - Scaffold

Once started, this game is additive! Why not add your selection in the comment box and the final BCB playlist will be posted tomorrow…

by AnikE