WSA Printed Textiles Design Student Wins SURTEX® 2014 DESIGNEXT® GRAND PRIZE
WSA printed textile student Tori McLean has been announced as the Grand Prize winner of SURTEX® 2014 DESIGNEXT®.
SURTEX is the annual trade show for the surface design industry, bringing together the owners and creators of surface design and manufacturers, retailers, marketers, etc., that utilise surface design for their product development needs. Tori, a third year printed textiles student, took top honours and received the Grand Prize package of $1,000, a feature on the SURTEX website for a full year, and recommendation letters to prospective employers.
This was the 28th year of the International designext® Student Competition and the theme was “street inspiration”. Students submitted original surface designs inspired by their vision of street influences in the year 2020. The call for submissions asked for a collection of six surface designs within one of the following categories: WEAR, WORK, LIVE and PLAY. McLean’s LIVE submission represented her vision of how shared living could look in the year 2020. Using a range of patterned screens as space, she designed Japanese motifs inspired by the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. To create her designs, McLean used airbrushing and graffiti with laser-cut stencils to incorporate the Street Inspiration theme.
The four designext judges, including Dorothy Cosonas, Creative Director of Knoll Textiles and Knoll Luxe and David Laubach, Director of Design, critiqued the portfolios of all four designext winners, who each travelled to New York City where their work was displayed before 6,000 attendees and 300 exhibitors. They found McLean’s talent and vision to be beyond her 3 years of study and commented that her work was “prolific”. “Tori McLean did an outstanding job demonstrating her passion for surface design with an exceptional entry,” said Penny Sikalis, SURTEX vice president. “Tori and her fellow winners will benefit greatly from this experience and it’s our expectation that it will help launch the careers of these talented, young professionals.”
Image credit – Tori McLean. Copyright artist’s own.
Click here to see the full SURTEX® news item. See Tori’s website at http://torimclean.co.uk/