Are you a student with a passion for design? Then join Cor Unum’s Design Contest 2024-2025! We offer you the opportunity to showcase your unique talent to a professional jury and audience. As a ceramics maker, we want to keep the craft alive and offer you a platform! Alumni (max. one year graduated) may also participate.

Each year, we challenge you with a new, relevant theme. This year’s theme is:

Peace of Mind

How are you? Your mind, like many others’, certainly has something to endure. How do you cope with the issues of the world like war, death and destruction; things that through news and social media, seem to be becoming ever more present in our lives? This can lead to a feeling of vulnerability and frustration. How do you keep things in perspective and cope in these uncertain times? How do you achieve a calm and worry-free mind?

Reacting with love and compassion often leads to more creativity than reacting from a place of fear. What do peace and freedom mean to you, and how do you experience them?

Show us by designing something that expresses how you find peace and resilience in these challenging times.

Feel inspired and free!

Ambassador of this year’s contest; Bas Kosters

As an artist and designer, Bas Kosters is driven by commitment and compassion. He creates worlds inhabited by radiant, alarming and endearing figures that reflect his social engagement. No matter the discipline, Bas works vigorously and with enthusiasm, but he is especially fond of textile and graphic art, which he uses to express and celebrate personal and societal themes. He approaches difficult emotions in a light-footed way, with subtle and sometimes wry humor and his trademark texts. Bas’ fascination for cartoon characters, visualizations and erotica leads to a reality full of friction, full of different views that compete for your attention.

Schedule

I’m in! / Register untill 30 March 2025 Individual registration via this link
Here it is / 14 April 2025 Deadline delivering prototype in Den Bosch
You’re the one / End of April 2025 Announcement nominees
Here I am / May 2025 Pitch by nominees and Jury Day

Jury

The permanent jury consists of chairperson Mary Hessing (Editor-in-Chief of WOTH), Bao Ya Fei (Design Curator), Anne van der Zwaag (Director and owner of OBJECT Rotterdam), and Charlotte Landsheer (Director of Cor Unum). This year, ambassador Bas Kosters will serve as a guest jury member.

 Prizes

From the submissions, 15 designs will be nominated. These will be exhibited a few weeks prior to the jury day at Cor Unum. On the jury day, different prizes will be awarded. Additionally, a public prize will be selected from the exhibited nominated entries by visitors. The public prize will receive a €100 gift voucher from Cor Unum. The winner of the first prize will be guided by and at Cor Unum in researching the production of their design and bringing it to market.

 Designer Business Boost!

In addition, we are organizing a ‘Designer Business Boost’ masterclass for all 15 nominees in June 2025. How do you market your product? How do you determine the value of a design? Director Lotte Landsheer (Cor Unum) and guest designers with extensive experience in the professional field will share their stories, experiences, and provide tools to motivate and inspire you as an aspiring entrepreneur! The names of the designers will be announced at a later stage.

Conditions for Participation

  • The submitted prototype may be in any desired material but must ultimately be producible in earthenware or porcelain.
  •  You grant Cor Unum permission to produce your design.
  • You give permission to use your design and presentation in publications.
  • You give permission for your design to be part of an exhibition.
  •  Once your design is nominated, it is expected that you attend the award ceremony or be available online.

Contact? Email Babette and Monique designcontest@cor-unum.com or call 073 303 0058.

*Photo credits poster Design Contest Marc Deurloo