What's on in Cardiff?

The Best of Welsh Design Awards - submissions now open

Submissions are now open for the Best of Welsh Design Awards and the organisers, the Cardiff Design Festival, are delighted to announce that this year’s sponsors are Comisiwn Dylunio Cymru/Design Commission for Wales.

The Awards are open to professionals and new graduates working in every design discipline, from urban and landscape design and architecture, to branding, interactive and graphics, furniture, product and fashion, design thinking and social design.  They celebrate the wealth of talented designers and design-thinkers in the city and across Wales and help ensure that their skills and passion are recognised.

‘The beauty of the Best of Welsh Design Awards 2012 is that it doesn’t have to be about buildings or contract values or big projects’, explained the Chief Executive of Comisiwn Dylunio Cymru/Design Commission for Wales, Carole-Anne Davies.  ‘It can be about your creative thinking, about ideas and approaches that stimulate the imagination, make us think and whet the national appetite for great design. Good design matters to Wales and in the places where we live, learn, heal and have fun - it matters a great deal. ‘

The Awards are open to professionals working in Wales or from Welsh based clients and to graduates from Wales or from Welsh based courses.  Work completed for a paying client should be entered as professional. Entries can also be sent in by delighted clients.

The Awards are part of the Cardiff Design Festival which kicks off on 28 September 2012 and runs for two full weeks of events, exhibitions, talks, challenges, happenings and socials highlighting the wealth of design talent that can be found, not just in the city of Cardiff but across the whole of Wales.

Now in their seventh year the Awards have become a key part of the Festival and this year’s judging panel is the most exciting ever. Consisting of design leaders and past winners the judges include Richard Seymour, from world renowned design agency SeymourPowell, Glenn Tutssel of The Brand Union, Carole-Anne Davies of the Design Commission for Wales and Mike Cleague, BAFTA award winner and owner of the Cardiff based, digital interactive agency, Carbon Studio.

The Festival Director, Olwen Moseley said, “Design permeates every aspect of our lives from the way our breakfast is packaged to the design of the beds we sleep in. The emphasis for the awards is on results - not just what looks great but on what impact has been made.  They are a showcase of the greatest innovations Wales has to offer, so the more entrants we get the better! The Festival itself always has new partners joining in, each bringing new ideas and themes that give the Festival a distinctive and fresh flavour everytime.”

For details on how to enter or for more information about the Festival and events visit www.cardiffdesignfestival.org. The deadline for submissions is midnight on 17 August 2012.