Welcome back to the Creative Awards London blog where we bring you our latest bespoke awards and trophies. Design, as you can imagine, is central to what we do and inspiration for our designs can be found in many places. Indeed, Head of design at Washington State University Joe Sparano put it perfectly, “Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.” is one that we hold dear when designing and crafting our custom made awards. A balance between branding, functionality and style - the journey behind each award from inception to creation is an exciting one that we relish. This week we focus on inspiring designers across the world of architecture, furniture and product design and share some of our favourite designers. 

Antoni Gaudí

Spanish Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí is best known for his magnum opus the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia (part Neo-Gothic, part Naturalistic) is a timeless creation that  is both a homage to the divine and to man’s own creativity. Gaudí’s remarkable talent was certainly ahead of his time and his conceptualisation and the design of spaces in the 20thcentury is a testament to his creativity and ability. In addition to large municipal works, Gaudí also designed interior spaces, doors, and furniture that look as though they are a part of the bizarrely seductive universe that his architecture hails from. The Gossip Chair in particular, which is a series of seats conjoined at the armrests, is a shining example of his style being applied. 

The Eames

Countless ink has been spent celebrating the Eames whose moulded plywood lounge chair has gone down in design history ever since its debut in the 1950s. Since then, the timeless chair and its accompanying ottoman have been in constant production. It even holds a spot in the permanent collection of MoMA in New York City. In addition to this stunning contribution to furniture design, the Eames' home in Pacific Palisades (Case Study House #8, 1949) stands as a live-able (and lived-in) fantasy interior and somehow continues to look fresh and unbridled by decades of passing trends.

Paul Rand

In regards to branding, a logo is one of the most important aspects. A well-designed logo builds trust, tells people who you are and what you do. One of iconic logo designer Paul Rand's contemporaries, Louis Danzinger, once said of him, "He almost single handedly convinced business that design was an effective tool." Rand's work was mainly in rebranding corporate identities. Rand's designs were decidedly reductive and seemingly uncomplicated, and a style that was once groundbreaking, has now become the model for generations of graphic designers today.

Thomas Heatherwick

The man behind Heatherwick Studio, Thomas Heatherwick often takes viewers on a flight of fancy. For instance, for the 2010 Shanghai Expo, representing the U.K Heatherwick worked with Kew Gardens’ Millennium Seed Bank Partnership to design a structure filled with optic fibres holding 60,000 plant seeds. His architectural work often provokes through structures that almost seem alive.  Within the studio, there is also a focus on re-inventing everyday objects, like a spinning chair that moves the sitter around like a top. Heatherwick is also the man behind the 2012 Olympic Cauldron, as well as the proposal for a “Garden Bridge” in London.  

Philippe Starck

This internationally renowned product designer began his career as the artistic director of Pierre Cardin's publishing house. Following that accomplishment, Philippe Starck went on to establish his own industrial design company that would work with the likes of Driade, Alessi and Kartell in Italy, Drimmer in Austria, Vitra in Switzerland, and Disform in Spain. His dedication to the idea of democratic design led him to create mass-produced consumer products rather than singular bespoke pieces. Starck gradually expanded his design practice to every genre possible: furniture, domestic appliances, staplers, toothbrushes and lemon reamers, tableware, even clothing, food, and architecture. Perhaps, the wonder of Starck is that his vision is not limited by medium, but instead is liberated by their respective possibilities.