This year, Dutch Design Awards (DDA) works with ten former winners or nominees in the Young Designers category. Each of them highlights one young designer and promising name in the current design field working on the same mission as themselves.

ST-DUO

Young designer spotlighted by Gabriel Fontana’s

Dutch Design Awards 2024

With their studio ST-DUO, Sophie Balch and Tijn de Kok emphasise design’s capacity as a driver for meaningful collaboration. Their projects span cultural, social, political, and environmental issues, aiming to support and empower those working towards change. They merge graphic design, strategy, campaign development, and participatory workshops, prioritising the human element in their work. Driven by their Manifesto for a Better World—a document outlining the studio’s ethos—ST-DUO produces identities that embody the right attitude, helping others stand for their work and beliefs. The manifesto identifies five roles ST-DUO deems crucial for navigating challenges and achieving positive impact, for which the studio develops collaborative design methodologies. 

In the collaboration Design Thinking ≠ Doing! ST-DUO worked with Misiconi, an inclusive dance company with dancers of mixed abilities. By introducing design to the dance floor, they aimed to develop a toolkit that empowers teachers and dancers to explore more inclusive educational methods. Working with young adult dancers with intellectual disabilities and/or learning difficulties, ST-DUO explored the value design can add to inclusive teaching. Experimenting and collaborating with the dance company was essential. The resulting toolkit helps dancers document their process, develop autonomy, and gain insights into their growth. The research and development are documented in a publication titled A New Way to Grow, which includes interviews with experts from education and design, offering a comprehensive overview of Misiconi’s innovative talent development route.

Gabriel Fontana

Young Designer Dutch Design Awards 2023

Gabriel Fontana uses sport as more than a metaphor for society. His work focuses on inclusion and reaches different layers of society through education, culture and the sports industry. As such, he designs and develops new forms of pedagogy, activities and games, where sports become the perfect vehicle to question what rules we have agreed upon in the past and whether they now work for or against us. Gabriel’s methods aim to give people a playful way of experiencing the prevailing norms of identity, community and inclusion, exploring what they mean and how we can bring about change. In doing so, he gives new meaning to our idea of togetherness while reshaping sports to support societal shifts.

Gabriel Fontana’s strength is that he uses design effectively to influence how we interact in a time where playing ‘against each other’ is usually the norm. Drawing on a social design framework, he proposes new team sports that deconstruct group dynamics and cultivate empathy. He graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2019 with Multiform, and continued collaborating with the municipality of Rotterdam towards an educational programme for primary and secondary schools that contributes to inclusive physical education. His new work Cheers is set to take place in Los Angeles in 2025 in collaboration with Villa Albertine, exploring how cheerleading is being reclaimed by queer communities as an emancipatory act. Seen as a socio-political dance that shapes our understanding of gender, sexuality, and body norms worldwide through pop culture, Cheers also addresses how social justice movements —such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter— reshape American sports culture, thus bringing global impact.

Dutch Design Awards
Dutch Design Awards (DDA) has been a leader in interpreting Dutch design for years. DDA’s goal is broader than rewarding the best design: we want the conversation about Dutch design to continue. With great openness and curiosity, we therefore facilitate exchanges between designers and curators, public and professionals. In order to continue emphasising the essential impact of design on society and to contribute to the development of the profession.