This year on May 17 our founders, Andy and Celine Holloway, are off to the Good Design Awards 60th-anniversary ceremony!
An event that explores groundbreaking, sustainable Australian design, it promises to be an amazing night at the Sydney Opera House, where the winners of this year’s entries are announced.
Holloway has worked for the Good Design Festival for two years now and are festival partners. We house the design entries in our storage warehouses and deliver them to the Entertainment Quarter (aka Fox Studios) for judging. Once these complicated design pieces have been judged, they are safely transported back to the warehouse (a bump out) while the judges deliberate. When the winners are announced we move the final entries to the Opera House for display.
An incredible event that’s always a pleasure to attend, we chatted with Rachel Wye, General Manager for the Good Design Awards about what makes it so exciting.
Can you tell us about Good Design, what occurs each year, and what the event means for Australian design?
Good Design Australia is an international design promotion organisation, responsible for managing the annual Good Design Awards. The Good Design Awards were established in 1958 by the Industrial Design Council of Australia and are one of the oldest and most prestigious design awards in the world and are recognised by the World Design Organisation as Australia’s peak design endorsement program. This year we are celebrating our 60 year anniversary and after 60 years remain committed to promoting the importance and value of design to business, industry, government and the general public.
But what Good Design comes down to for me is we truly believe design can help create a better, more sustainable and prosperous world for everybody. It’s about improving peoples lives in a very real and meaningful way. It has been and continues to be a genuine pleasure for me to work with people everyday that are so wholeheartedly committed to working towards this – perhaps somewhat idealistic, but very achievable – goal.
It’s an incredibly fun and exciting time – what are you most looking forward to this year?
I love the whole program of events and I’m not sure I could pick one. But my top three would be…
ONE: Judging Week, when all of the entries are put into one very big studio and we spend a week with some of the most talented and inspiring people from around the world assessing the best design work in Australia and from overseas.
TWO: The Good Design Showcase, where all of the winning projects are put on display in a 3-day exhibition in Sydney Harbour. Seeing the public and the industry engage with and be inspired by these projects is what it’s all about.
THREE: and the thing I’m probably most excited about this year is the 60th Anniversary Good Design Awards Ceremony, which is being held for the very first time at the incredible Sydney Opera House. It’s such a beautiful building I can’t think of anywhere else we would rather hold these Awards – very exciting!
Holloway has helped out two years in a row with Good Design’s Festival, we love working with you guys! How do you find working with the Holloway boys?
We absolutely love working with Holloway! When we started looking for a new logistics partner we were very apprehensive about finding someone that could take this on and have the capacity to work with us to constantly try to refine and streamline the process. There are so many moving parts to the process and it’s not always a simple fix, so having a logistics partner that is really willing to roll up their sleeves and work together to make it a success is absolutely essential to us.
It’s a challenging project, to say the least, but the team at Holloway are always willing to go above and beyond for us. Always such a pleasure and just really lovely people – we love you guys!
Thanks, we love you guys too!
Lastly, the Good Design Awards ceremony is coming up May 17th at the Sydney Opera House. Holloway is excited to attend! As the most prestigious design event in Australia – what goes into the logistics of the evening? And what can people expect to see?
We’re looking forward to celebrating with Holloways on the night (hopefully beer in hand)! It takes an incredible effort from a lot of people to bring the night together, but we love it. As our 60th Anniversary, this year’s Good Design Awards Ceremony and After Party is set to be one of the biggest celebrations of design in Australian history. The red carpet will be rolled out for guests at 5pm and we’ll have photographers ready to capture guests in front of the Offical Media Wall. The Ceremony will be opened by the incredible Soprano Amelia Farrugia, we will be joined by our very special guests Jan Utzon (son of Jørn Utzon – the Architect of the Sydney Opera House), Dilki de Silva, Secretary General of the World Design Organisation and Michael Bryce AM, our Patron Emeritus.
The Good Design Award Best in Class winners will be presented on stage with our new sustainably designed trophies (which are one of my personal favourite things to come out of 2018, you can find more information on our website, but we have worked with the Evolve Group and The Seabin Project to actually take plastics out of our oceans and use this to create our trophies). The Good Design Award for Sustainability and Good Design Award of the Year winners will also be presented on stage.
After the Ceremony concludes guests will be invited to the Offical After Party, held over the three floors of the Northern Foyer of the Sydney Opera House, providing guests stunning views of Sydney Harbour. Food and drink will be served throughout the night and a live band will join guests in celebrating the results of the 2018 Good Design Awards.
Our huge thanks to Rachel for interviewing with us.
*Tickets are available for the Good Design Awards Gala Ceremony at the Sydney Opera House (17 May 2018) and the Good Design Showcase at Overseas Passenger Terminal (OPT), Sydney (25 – 27 May 2018).
Limited spots are on offer so sign up now to see amazingly innovative Australian design at its absolute best.
