Good Design Awards

Good Design Australia is an international design promotion organisation. Among many other signature design events, its manages Australia’s annual Good Design Awards.

The organisation approached us in 2015 to design a highly entertaining, content-rich Good Design Awards festival that would engage a high-profile guest list and reinforce the importance of quality in branded experiences. This involved developing a creative theme that would bring the spirit of Good Design to life in an ‘effortlessly sophisticated’ way.

Given the complexity and format of the Good Design Awards had evolved significantly over the years, we had to deliver a festival that featured a unique public exhibition, judges awards, a Good Design exchange, Vivid exhibition and an awards ceremony.

We commandeered the Overseas Passenger Terminal in Sydney, using the lower ground level as a public exhibition of the Good Design Awards finalists’ designs and the upper level for the ceremony itself.

The lower ground space was purposely styled as a retail environment using carefully placed wooden pallets. This ‘categorised’ the works and created an engaging, immersive display. The exhibition was open during Vivid, a world-renowned light exhibition, allowing us to leverage the event’s 1.7 million attendees.

Designing and delivering the Good Design Awards was a team effort in the extreme. We worked with the festival’s owner, Dr Brandon Gien, to help restructure the Good Design Awards and make it accessible to the public. We also worked closely with Vivid Sydney to ensure their investment criteria were met, and to develop the strategy and creative design behind the delivery of the festival as a whole.

“We have worked with many different agencies over the years – Sense blows every single one of them out of the water.  They created a very clear vision for our festival and followed through in spades to deliver a spectacular and magical experience that our guests are still raving about.  Their methodology is as professional as it gets and they truly understand how to work to a challenging budget and brief.  They have a very unique process that gave us piece of mind throughout the journey and allowed our team to get on with our jobs and not worry about anything.  I can’t wait to work with them again.”

- Brandon Gien, CEO Good Design Australia