About Swiss Design Awards 2023

About Swiss Design Awards 2023

The exhibition Swiss Design Awards 2023 in June during Art Basel and Design Miami/Basel were showcasing 52 design projects from all over Switzerland. These are the finalists of the Swiss design competition, selected from the nearly 250 projects submitted to the competition in 2023. Since its inception, the Swiss Design Competition has been a platform for discovering talent and for young designers to make a name for themselves. The age limit of 40 was abolished in 2012, opening up the competition to all age groups. The variety of backgrounds represented in the Swiss Design Awards never fails to impress year after year. We find young people addressing complex social issues alongside experienced design professionals who make their craftsmanship appear effortless. Newer, up-and-coming studios exhibit their projects next to internationally known and recognised designers. Some are self-taught, while others have taken the academic route.

A vast range of working methods, approaches and attitudes are behind the projects displayed across 2,000 square metres for a week, creating a dense and rich dialogue.

This year, the cultural participation and mediation work was taking place on three levels: inclusion of students (from middle school to university level), tailored offerings for professionals and the general public, and active involvement of local associations. As ever, we are happy to allow members of our network to use the Swiss Design Awards as a platform for their own events.

By expanding our audience, we hoped to awaken people’s curiosity about Swiss design and the competition itself. The value of our mediation efforts lies in sparking discussion about the Swiss Design Awards and asking this audience to answer burning questions such as these:

• How do we judge design? Which criteria do we use – and which should we use?
• Why do we divide work into categories when it often involves a mix of disciplines?
• What role should the Swiss Design Awards play in future?

There is thus a dialogue with the visitors. This catalogue Swiss Design Awards 2023 accompanying the exhibition also features a form of dialogue – a visual one – in the way it juxtaposes the finalists. We sent the finalists a questionnaire to try and find out as much as possible about how they think and work. This all adds up to a lot of words, which is hardly surprising given this year’s motto of the visual identity “The Word is Yours”. (Cf www.swissdesignawards.ch). We face a flood of images these days, and it can sometimes be hard to visualise things in our own imagination. At the same time, the processing of text is taking on a whole new significance thanks to the rise of prompt-based artificial intelligence. Machines can interpret and analyse language, but they are not (yet) able to understand every little nuance of human communication. Choosing the right words to convey a message effectively is part of the designer’s job.

We are proud of how the Swiss Design Awards appeals to its audience and would like to thank all those who have given us the benefit of their skills and enthusiasm: the graphic design studio Eurostandard, the architects of Truwant + Rodet, and Mathieu Musy for coordination and mediation. It is also a great pleasure for us to be sharing a space with our sister event, the Swiss Art Awards.

Special thanks are due to the jury, which is made up of the Federal Design Commission together with selected experts and has welcomed new members this year. They have the great responsibility of selecting 17 projects from the nearly 250 submitted.

Anna Niederhäuser
Responsible Design
Federal Office of Culture

Jury

The jury consists of the seven members of the Federal Design Commission elected by the Federal Council and four experts.

President of the Federal Design Commission

Nathalie Herschdorfer
Director, Photo Elysée, Lausanne

Members of the Federal Design Commission

Cécile Feilchenfeldt
Textile designer, Paris (FR)

Dr. Davide Fornari
Professor (Research and Development), Renens / Milano (IT)

David Glättli
Product designer and creative director, Zurich / Tokio (JP)

Andreas Gysin
Graphic designer, coder and artist, Lugano / Paris (FR)

Vera Sacchetti
Design critique and curator, Basel

Ivan Sterzinger
Graphic designer and editor, Zurich

Experts

Andrea Anner
Design & Robotics, Zurich

Florencia Colombo
Architect and artist, St. Gallen

Sandra Kassenaar
Graphic designer, Amsterdam (NL)

Eveline Roth
Fashion designer and professor, Basel / Bern