VIVID Emerging Designer Awards 2025: Jacob de Dassel Wins Double Honours!
The 22nd annual VIVID Emerging Designer Awards at Decor+Design Melbourne has announced a new wave of exceptional Australian furniture, lighting and object designers..
Jacob de Dassel’s Folding Chair was named both the Furniture Design winner and the Authentic Design Alliance Award of Merit winner. This double recognition signals strong momentum for minimalist, intentional design, and was awarded to a designer still completing architecture studies.
A Record Year for Emerging Design Talent
VIVID 2025 ran from 16–18 July at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre and remains Australia’s longest-running emerging design platform
Curated by Daniel Dalla Riva and produced by Latitude, the event saw 140+ entries and 82 finalists across multiple categories, the highest numbers in the competition’s history. This surge reflects just how vibrant emerging design is in Australia now.
The Folding Chair: Simplicity with Depth
Jacob de Dassel‘s ‘Folding Chair’ is more than a minimal object. It balances precision, aesthetic clarity, functionality, and sustainability. Every joint and connection point is refined. The final form reads clean but reveals careful decisions on proportion and user interaction. Follow his work – @dass.ign
“Remarkably, Jacob is still completing Architecture studies at Melbourne University, and this is only his second furniture design. The maturity of this work makes the double win even more striking.”
vivid design comp jury
Why the ADA Recognises the Folding Chair
The Authentic Design Alliance ‘Award of Merit’, now in its ninth year, honours entries that combine innovation, integrity, and execution. De Dassel’s design met all three.
The Folding Chair stands as a design that is honest and resolved.
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It respects user experience, offering comfort without ornament
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It uses sensible materials and methods, minimising waste
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It expresses its purpose clearly through form, not gimmick
VIVID 2025: A Showcase of Emerging Talent
The competition featured outstanding entries across multiple categories, with other notable winners including working across a vast array of objects and materiality.
Furniture Commendations
Key Stool by Jordan Conlan: exploring functional form in tough spatial contexts, and inspired by harsh natural environments.
Knitted Chair by Curtis Bloxsidge: an innovative hybrid timber-textile collaboration using a hybrid material combinatio
Judges’ Choice: Maryam Moghadam, ‘Gnawing’ [Knowing]
Gnawing [Knowing] ashtray juxtaposes both message and function. A cautionary object that also enables the behaviour it critiques, smoking.
Gnaw holds up a mirror to the complexity of human behaviour: our capacity to acknowledge harm while continuing to participate in it.
READ MORE ABOUT MARYAM – in The Age/Sydney Morning Herald here
Lighting Award
Curtis Bloxsidge, ‘Kukeri Floor Lamp’ (in collaboration with 2amClose)
Blends lending Bulgarian folklore with Art Deco charm in a reference to a Bulgarian costume worn whilst performing traditional rituals to fend off evil spirits. The fringed lamp is a playful expression of the classic floor lamp.
Commendation: Carl Broesen’s ‘Pipeflute Box’, explores rhythm through stainless steel construction
Vivid Object Design: Lucy Callahan, ‘Ridl’
Ridl is a bottle opener reimagined for comfort and elegance. Its unique downward action reduces wrist strain, blending intuitive function with minimalist form.
Designed for everyday use, Ridl is both a refined tool and a sculptural object. Rethinking a bottle opener with ergonomic and sculptural intent.
Object Design Commendation: Miranda Burgess, ‘Fractured Earth,’ spotlights the global ecological crisis through a thoughtful crafteced ceramic vessel.
Vivid Concept Design
Azzurra Zappacosta, UV-Reactive Colour Changing Drink Bottle for Sun Safety
This UV-sensitive drink bottle changes from white to navy blue in sunlight, helping users monitor UV exposure. The colour choice is accessible for red-green colour blindness.
Featuring an ergonomic cap and durable handle strap, it combines sun safety with comfort and convenience for everyday, on-the-go hydration and awareness.
Commendation: Jay Turno, Leigh Shapiro Ellis, Caleb Cummins, Mungo Moje-O’Brien, ‘Vault’
A monolithic phone lock box designed to quietly disrupt habitual device use at home. Intended as a centrepiece for minimal interiors, its function revealed through a slow turn of its outer form.
A tactile, ritual object facilitates disconnection from smartphones and reconnection to physical and emotional presence.
Commendation: Gloria Kim ‘Kkokkio’
Kkokkio, a ceramic glove-drying case with an acrylic stand, keeps rubber gloves dry.
Hygienic and long-lasting, it’s inspired by South Korea’s iconic pink gloves and their resemblance to a chicken’s comb. Kkokkio transforms a household essential into a playful, functional piece.
Vivid Colour Award
Azzurra Zappacosta, UV-Reactive Colour Changing Drink Bottle for Sun Safety
This UV-sensitive drink bottle changes from white to navy blue in sunlight, helping users monitor UV exposure. The colour choice is accessible for red-green colour blindness.
Featuring an ergonomic cap and durable handle strap, it combines sun safety with comfort and convenience for everyday, on-the-go hydration and awareness.
Commendation: Freddy Mata ‘Aeon Fox’
Inspired by the sighting of a red fox in North Melbourne during a lockdown, the colours represent the reflection of cars’ headlights on the Fox’s tale.
Vivid Student Award: Savannah Kelly, ‘Where Two Oceans Meet’
Inspired by Cape Leeuwin’s oceanic confluence, Where Two Oceans Meet captures the harmony of opposing forces.
Crafted from South West karri and jarrah, operable tambour doors curve like converging waves, blending functionality with the poetry of nature and a deep sense of place.
Commendation: Lachlan Willix, ‘Canopy Lamp’
Inspired by the place where it was made, it references memories of the Western Australian landscape and the morning sun reflecting through the trees, casting dappled light across the forest floor.
Commendation: Lenie Chin ‘Augi: Toy Design for Neurodiversity Inclusion’
A set of toys designed to create accessible, supportive, and inclusive play experiences for children with and without neurological differences.
Developed in collaboration with parents, educators, therapists, and neurodiversity specialists, Augi helps children with autism understand and express emotions through interactive character-building play during early childhood development.
Building on VIVID’s Legacy
VIVID continues to be the premier platform for emerging Australian designers to showcase their talent and gain industry recognition.
As VIVID enters its third decade, competitions are crucial for nurturing the next generation of talent and pushing the boundaries of what Australian design can achieve on the global stage.
Last year’s winners demonstrated the surge in highly skilled female designer makers. Explore the work by Amy Vidler (2024 Judges’ Choice Award), and Jess Humpston’s dual wins for Furniture Design and Authentic Design Alliance ‘Award of Merit’
Vivid is open to early-career practitioners been in practice for five years or less. Follow @vividdesigncomp or get updates at Decor&Design Show.
