RMIT graduates celebrated at the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards

RMIT graduates celebrated at the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards

A toolkit to help fashion businesses build better strategies for a sustainable future and a prosthetic leg for amputee motorcyclists designed by RMIT graduates were praised at the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards.

Recent PhD graduate Clarice Carvalho Garcia won Best in Category for Design Strategy for her industry toolkit, Fashion Futuring.

Conceptualised in a card game format, Fashion Futuring is designed to support the fashion industry in developing design-led and sustainability-driven approaches to strategic planning for concrete action.  

22 March 2024

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A navy box next to three playing cards, covered with abstract orange and pink label Fashion Futuring Toolkit. Image: Clarice Carvalho Garcia.

The toolkit consists of seven steps and a user manual that permits anyone in the fashion industry to use and adapt it for their circumstances. It is available to download free of charge with the hope it can reach a wide audience and encourage action.

Garcia said Fashion Futuring emerged as a response to the urgency to include creativity, societal values and collaboration in business efforts towards sustainable and regenerative futures. 

“Ultimately, Fashion Futuring is an invitation to industry stakeholders to think about what matters beyond profit and, more importantly, to act systemically to tune their business models accordingly to a new system of  values,” she said.

Fashion Futuring was tested and iterated with designers, design students, fashion forecasters, and the general public in workshop sessions conducted over a 14-month period. 

Feedback from participants indicated that Fashion Futuring has the potential to inaugurate a new way of thinking about fashion and futures, moving beyond next-season trends by helping multiple stakeholders in industry or education to think and act together in transitioning towards sustainability.

The Fashion Futuring toolkit was developed as part of Garcia’s PhD. Her win at the Victorian Premier’s Design Awards follows her success in the 2023 Good Design Awards where Fashion Futuring won for Fashion Impact. 

Innovation for motorcyclists highly commended 

Industrial Design graduate Trystan Paderno was highly commended in the Student Design Category for Project Shift, a prosthetic solution for amputee motorcycle riders. 

Three prosthetic legs with text "Project Shift" Project Shift. Image: Trystan Paderno.

The project adopts a holistic design philosophy that addresses the functional issues of riding as well as the psychological inhibitions amputees are confronted with.

Paderno’s research for Project Shift revealed that many solutions currently on the market are costly and require an amputee to modify their motorcycle, which also comes at significant expense. 

Project Shift presents an alternative option: a fully adaptable prosthetic leg. The prosthetic’s knee and ankle movements can be adjusted in a matter of seconds using the Project Shift app to ensure they are optimised for the motorcycle. 

While riding, the function of the leg is controlled by a handlebar-mounted wireless remote with 3 buttons, which can be used without hindering rider focus. 

Paderno developed Project Shift during his Honours design research course while studying at RMIT. He received the 2022 RMIT Industrial Design Dean’s Award for the project. 

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees at this year’s Victorian Premier’s Design Awards. 

 

Story: Rosie Shepherdson-Cullen

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22 March 2024

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