New international product design competition launches today

New international product design competition launches today

• Contact lens retailer Vision Direct launches inaugural “Visionaries” competition
• New product design competition to encourage innovation and create solutions for day-to-day challenges of contact lens wearers
• The competition, which closes in December 2019, is offering winners a £25,000 prize, plus £5,000 for their university

 Leading contact lens retailer Visiondirect.co.uk has launched its first student design competition, called ‘Visionaries’.

The international competition, launched simultaneously today 1st October 2019 in the UK, Netherlands, Spain and Italy, invites students to submit a product design aimed at helping contact lens wearers in their daily lives. It can be something simple, like an emergency contact lens carrier you can have on you all the time, or something a little more complex, like a new way of putting on contacts in the dark.

Hoping to generate creative ideas in an industry traditionally focused on medical products rather than lifestyle accessories, Vision Direct is offering £25,000 for the winning design along with £5,000 for the winning university. The ‘Visionaries’ competition is open to individual students and teams of up to four – undergraduates or postgraduates – from any higher education institution, college or university in the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Spain and Italy.

The Visionaries competition is poised to become a real cauldron of design ideas, with prestigious schools taking part,  such as London’s South Bank University School of Engineering, Madrid’s Istituto Europeo di Design (IED), Eindhoven’s Technische Universiteit and Italy’s University of Palermo, among many others.

Entries will be judged by a panel of industry experts, including founder and editor-in-chief of Dezeen Magazine, Marcus Fairs,  academic and international design consultant Kuno Prey, inventor and designer Duncan Shotton, Rainlight Creative Director Yorgo Lykouria and Vision Direct CEO, Michael Kraftman as well as the prestigious Design Council.

Commenting on the launch of the competition, Michael Kraftman, CEO of Vision Direct, said:

“Having been in the business for over 20 years now, I’m very much aware of the positive impact contact lenses have had on people’s lives. From something as simple as changing someone’s appearance and providing a wider field of view and causing less vision distortions, to being able to play sports – even at professional level – contacts have improved the lives of millions of people around the world.

As leaders in the industry in the UK and Europe, we’ve successfully managed to reduce the costs of contact lenses to consumers, making them widely available to a higher number of wearers. The next step is to acknowledge that wearing contacts will cause minor inconveniences, such as having to have spares on you if you’re not home, being extra careful about hygiene or paying extra attention when applying makeup.

We launched the ‘Visionaries’ competition to encourage creativity and innovation, hoping that some of these inconveniences can be addressed by the creative minds of tomorrow. I’m very excited to see the designs the students come up with.”

Entries to the “Visionaries” competition close on the 21^st December at 23:59, with runners up and the winning design announced in January 2020 and February 2020, respectively.

For the full brief and terms & conditions, please visit: https://www.visiondirect.co.uk/visionaries-student-competition-2019