Car Design News Contest

As one judge, Geert Jan Schellekens, Principal Automotive and Industrial Designer at SABIC Innovative Plastics, said; "From several hundred entries to 20 finalists in a day's time - what could have turned out to be a cumbersome process, if not a bureaucratic nightmare, actually became an intensive yet fun session with many intriguing and interesting interpretations of the contest brief - fuelling some lively discussions!"

Another strong impression from judges was also of the variety of design entry and the effort that had been put into them, as Dale Harrow said: "I'm very impressed with the standard, and particularly with the diversity of entries to the contest". Derek Buckmaster,Global Market Director, Body Panels & Glazing for SABIC Innovative Plastics, said: "I was surprised by the depth of thought which the entrants had put into their designs to meet the diverse needs of the three 'milenniumites' described in the design brief. The designs displayed numerous approaches to meeting the environmentally-friendly and light-weight goals."

All designs were considered relative to the Assessment Criteria a critically important part of the contest, created to ensure as much fairness in the process as possible and detailed in the Contest part of Car Design News. As Dale said; "The assessment criteria are good: they're forcing us to consider each design entry in a completely objective way by preventing our own personal agenda affecting the results"

The outcome of the day was the selection of 10 professional designer finalists and 10 student designer finalists, who have now been notified and provided with Autodesk Studio software to use in continuing to develop their designs. They will then submit these designs as digital design models on or before the 28 May, and these will be judged by the panel of senior designer judges. The winners will be announced and their work be shown alongside the final work of all finalists in an on-line gallery on Car Design News from the 2 July.

But for now, whilst 20 designer finalists are starting to develop their designs further, we would like to say a heartfelt thank you to all of the hundreds of designers who entered the contest and have not been chosen as finalists. We appreciate how hard they will have worked to create their design proposals and how frustrating it can be not to be selected as a finalist - with so many entries only a small proportion have made it through. We hope those who entered, enjoyed working to our design brief and will enter future Car Design News Contests.

Have a look at the entries shown on this page and in the photo gallery for a small selection of the design entries not chosen as finalists.

Related content:
Car Design News Contest Judges
Car Design News Contest Assessment Criteria

By CDN Team