Contests Archive: CDN-GM Interactive Design Competition 2011

The Car Design News - GM Interactive Design Competition was open to design students across the USA and Canada.

This was an open, online competition, which was held in the spirit of the web, where data and information are shared and exchanged with ease, and where people could come together to collaborate. 

In this spirit, the judges were looking to see the contribution the entrants made within the wider online community and how they helped their competition peers. We advised students to engage in dialogue with those who commented on their work, and where they made changes to their design based on feedback they received to illustrate how and why this is so.

The competition ran in two phases (outlined below). The initial phase closed on July 4th and asked students to design a vehicle interior; while the second phase asked students to design a vehicle exterior and closed on November 7th. Students did not have to have entered the first phase to participate in Phase 2.

Phase 1 (Interiors)

The first stage of the competition rain from April - July 4th 2011, and asked design students from the USA and Canada to design a vehicle interior.

GM's four brands (GMC, Cadillac, Chevrolet and Buick) each set a brief and students could choose to submit an entry for as many of the briefs as they wished.

Each brief consisted of several pages of material to help students understand who they are, what they wanted them to do and clues as to what the judges and mentors would be looking for. We've found in previous competitions that those students who have studied and produced work which directly answers the brief, or develops themes that the brief outlines, have been most successful.

Judges, mentors and other students and designers who registered on the competition website could comment and provide feedback on the students' work throughout the competition. We encouraged students to upload entries, thoughts and ideas as they developed - the development process was one of the crucial aspects in the judging process.

As students produced more work, they could archive an entry, and then upload new material, which became the active or live entry. At the close of the competition, the students' current live entry, becomes their final submission.

Thirteen finalists were announced shortly after this phase closed, in July 2011, who then competed against each other for one of the four GM internships that were being offered as prizes to the four eventual winners! They had until November 7th to continue working on their entries and really prove to the judges that they deserve to be a winner.

Phase 2 (Exteriors)

This final phase ran from July - November 7th 2011 and asked design students from the USA and Canada to design a vehicle exterior.

The briefs remained the same as for the Interiors phase.

The judging of Phase 2 and the final judging of Phase 1 took place in mid-November and the Phase 2 finalists were announced shortly after.

Every finalist was invited to Detroit in January to attend the NAIAS in January 2012, where the overall winners were announced.

There were 4 winners chosen by General Motors from each Phase of the competition (one winner per brand, for each phase - that's 8 in total). Each of these 8 winners won a paid internship at GM's design studios in Warren, Michigan... and an iPad 2!

By CDN Team