Announcing the 2024 DHS Prize Winners

Awards

7 October 2024

Announcing the 2024 DHS Design Writing Prize and Student Essay Prize winners.

The Design History Society would like to share the outcome of the Design Writing and Student Essay Prizes (undergraduate and postgraduate categories). This year, we received a total of 22 submissions in all three categories. The standard of submissions was high, making the reviewing and selection of winners a challenge. As usual, this was carried through a double-blind peer-review process and the winners were chosen on the basis of their scores. In addition to this, the top three Design Writing Prize entries were evaluated by this year's Guest Judge Anne Massey, who chose the winning entry. We would like to express our gratitude to all the authors and to our judge, Anne Massey, who, through their research and writing, enrich and expand our field. Without further due, the winners based on top scores are:

Design Writing Prize Winner

Kitt Santos, Designer and Student on the Master of Design Futures programme at RMIT University, Melbourne.

Paper title: "Examining design orientations through Indigenous Filipino strengths' perspective"

Paper summary: Design has historically been shaped by Western politics and frameworks, influencing products and services across diverse contexts. This chapter offers an alternative design approach grounded in Indigenous Filipino values, emphasizing human dignity, collective strength, and inclusion while encouraging designers to embrace plurality and diverse experiences.

This paper was published in the text Entanglements of Designing Social Innovation in the Asia-Pacific

Follow Kitt on LinkedIn

Student Essay Prize (undergraduate) winner:

Mia Bejarin, 3rd year student on the BA (Hons) Graphic Design programme at the University for the Creative Arts (Canterbury)

Paper title: "Documenting Reality: How Far Did Snapshot Photography In Alternative Fashion Magazines Capture 1990's Youth Culture?"

Paper summary: My essay explores the controversial world of 1990’s snapshot fashion photography, from its alternative roots to its mainstream co-option. It tackles issues of youth and working class exploitation, as well as the arguable glorification of drugs within the heroine chic modelling space.

Visit Mia's website and follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram

Student Essay Prize (postgraduate) winner:

Zarna Hart, RCA/V&A MA History of Design Graduate (2022-23), lecturer at Kingston University and University of Arts London, and Art Director at her self-titled design firm.

Paper title: "Not All Trunks Float: A brief look into the parallels of history-telling/making/archiving in Windrush culture (1960-2023)"

Paper summary: "Not All Trunks Float" investigates the intersection between print culture and oral histories of and by the Windrush between 1950-2023. It advocates for the greater exploration of the performative and ethereal elements in post-colonial story-telling and history-making, as well as sheds light on the closely tied relationship these cultures have with the role of the (colonial/decolonial) institution and its archive.

Visit Zarna's website and follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram

Runners up:

Design Writing Prize: Emma Ng, Independent Scholar, for the paper "RAGE MACHINE: Surplus design on the front lines of the culture wars"

Student Essay Prize (postgraduate): Loïc Derrien, MA Student in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies at Parson’s School of Design, for the paper "Materializing a New Kingdom: Piqué Objects at the Court of Naples in the Eighteenth Century"

Student Essay Prize (postgraduate): Nikki Myers, MA Student in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies at Parson’s School of Design, for the paper "Recodifying the Banana Leaf: Colonialism, Glamour, and Design"

We congratulate our winners and runners up wholeheartedly for their invaluable contribution to design history.