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Heineken unveils design challenge finalists as Milan Design Week launches

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By Ishbel Macleod, PR and social media consultant

April 9, 2013 | 5 min read

Heineken is today unveiling the five finalists of its 2012/13 Your Future Bottle Design Challenge at the prestigious Milan Design Week, where the winner will be chosen.

The four finalists are Andy Audsley from Australia, Fernando Degrossi from Brazil (with two designs) and Anna Ptasińska and Bartek Bak from Poland.

The final winner will be unveiled during a live judging event at The Magazzini - Heineken’s new space at Milan Design Week. Throughout the week, members of the public will be given the chance to vote for their favourite design via an innovative interactive vending display.

During Milan Design Week, The Magazzini will showcase design talent and hold educational workshops by day and become a design-led party space at night. This is the second edition of its Heineken Open Design Explorations (ODE) innovation project.

This year’s ‘nightlife’ theme will give designers from four cities - New York, Singapore, Warsaw and Mexico City- a brief to design an all-round lounge bar experience, with the collaborated design to result in a pop up space that will be showcased at Fuori Salone 2014, and in other cities of the world later next year.

The four judges, Heineken’s global head of design Mark van Iterson, Cool Hunting’s Even Orensten, Mark Dytham of PeckaKucha and digital design pioneer Joshua Davis, will then hold a live debate at The Magazzini and battle it out on stage to decide which will become Heineken’s next limited edition bottle. Speaking to The Drum before the finalists were announced, van Iterson said: “The Remix our Future challenge is really open to everybody, we literally had thousands of entrants. People who have spent probably a couple of hours thinking up a future Heineken bottle.“Of course there will be only one, but we will showcase the top 30 in Milan, which is pretty cool if you’ve developed something and see it up during Milan Design Week. It shows that people really love to endorse, and buy into a brand and really think about it. “It burrows into the history and the roots of the brand, and it has created an evolution: literally, people remix what we have done in the past, which I think in general is what good brand design is about. It is not just something that comes out of nowhere, but is the foundation of the personality – which may be true, by the way, for good design in general.”Van Iterson added: “The standard of entries this year has been outstanding and has made my, and the rest of the judging panel’s job a tough one - a great problem to have! Handing over our design heritage to young talent has been an exciting journey of discovery and for me has proven that using the past to inspire the future is important for a brand’s evolution.”When asked what he would be looking for when choosing the winner, he explained: “It’s a bit of a mix of things, obviously. There should be an elegant brand fit, it should surprise us, mostly we want to find an idea that we really wouldn’t have thought of ourselves. And for me, what’s the really most important thing is that it should have a truly original idea behind it. The one which won last year was the name of the brand pushed together into a star shape.“The bottle we choose does not need to be in the standout colours, it is for a limited edition. It’s for our 140th anniversary celebrating creativity. We have had bottles with different colours. I would be very open to creative inspiration, which would surprise us or push us outside of our comfort zone, and maybe inspire us to look at another style. “This is one of the occasions where we should be ok, and we are open to suggestions.”

Andy Audsley

Anna Ptasińska

Bartek Bak

Fernando Degrossi

The winning design will go on sale later in 2013.To be part of the 2013/14 Heineken Open Design Explorations team, designers have until May 31 to apply on www.heineken.tumblr.com, whilst people can share their lounge bar experiences by uploading instagram pictures of lounge bar experiences using the hashtag #futureloungedesign. The best images will be featured on the Tumblr.

Heineken

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