The awards were established in 1924 – the world’s longest running student design competition – to challenge emerging designers across the globe to tackle real-world issues.
They are open to university students and new graduates from all disciplines to apply their design thinking and skills in new ways.
Phillipa Bridges won the Unilever Award of £2500 in the Circular Futures category, which tasked budding designers with developing a product, system or business model for Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG).
She created ‘Infinity Mascara’, a refillable mascara product and service solution where the mascara can be applied to eyelashes with a 3D-printed fingertip that fits the individual user.
As the product only needs to be replaced every 3-6 months, it is estimated that Infinity Mascara could save 25 mascara bottles from landfill for each user.
Nerissa Prawiro won the RSA Fellows Award of £1250 in the Good Life 2.0 category for ‘Diit’, a personalised automated diet management system.
It provides handheld analysis of calories and micronutrients in food to detect over/under consumption through scanning and weight. The system encourages compliance with renal diet allowances and may prevent progression of kidney failure.
Dr Carolina Escobar-Tello, Lecturer in Industrial/Product Design at Loughborough Design School, said: “The competition challenges students to open up the potential of design to benefit society, to stretch boundaries and think differently about design; finding innovative, commercially viable, practical solutions to global problems.
“The winners are a great testament of the high calibre of our students and the skills and capabilities with which they leave university, and will now put into practice to shape the future of design.”
Award winners will be celebrated at a ceremony at RSA House in London on 21 June.
Further details on this year’s designs are available here.