The idea behind this year’s theme Every little bit counts is that the death of one thing gives life to another. Since our planet only has one life, the challenge this time around was promoting circular economy through logistics. Possibly one of the bigger challenges ever set in this competition. Which means submissions had to transcend traditional design with a widened scope. Nearly 1000 designers from over 50 countries showed their interest in the competition. 160 submitted their creative concept, many of which of outstanding quality. In 2 jury rounds, 10 finalists were selected and presented at Milan Design Week back in April.
New this year, there are only top prize winners in three categories, in the areas of transportation & product design, user interface, and business innovation design. Each category winner receives 5,500 Euro. Apart from the three prizes, the Special Mention Ian Cartabiano Award was presented.
Toyota Micro Cab is a vision of a circular and self sufficient autonomous mobility service for sustainable cities in the future.
Nicolà Borrer
Royal College of Art, London, UK
BLOOM CHARGE is an EV charging network that creates cooler, cleaner air in urban areas while powering your car.
Simon Lavender
California State University, Long Beach, United States
ENVIRU is an application centered on a robot that engages users in litter pickup while simultaneously providing package delivery services.
Maren Javenes, Elise Almaas, Anne Selseng
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
FLEX is the artificial mobility platform brand prioritizing the logistic and sharing mobility businesses.
Juyeong Son
Coventry University, Coventry, UK
It’s taken us humans a very long time to realize that everything we do, everything we make leaves a trace. We pay a price for getting what we want. Be it cars, food, medication, metals, cosmetics… Pretty much everything. And sometimes that trace is utterly undesirable. A form of impact that amounts to a serious threat to all of us. Like pollution, erosion, deforestation, loss of species and so on, and so forth. The list is long, indeed. What’s recently become huge on the agenda is climate change. We need to tackle this, big time! The old linear economy has got to go. Where we transformed raw materials into products and, then, when they’d they done their job, we threw them away; they became waste. It just isn’t sustainable.
What the world needs now (has done for quite a while) is a circular economy. Where things we make aren’t thrown away. They’re used again, and again, and again. And may well turn up in guises we couldn’t have anticipated. Like the girl’s blade in the film. She’s wearing it to help her run. In medical terms it’s called a transfibial prosthesis. Whatever it was in a previous life, we don’t know. But we like the idea that it’s been used before. And that it helps this girl realize one of her dreams. A big dream.
The winner in each category will be handsomely rewarded. Not only will they receive 5,500 Euros. But winners and finalists will also have the opportunity to apply for an internship with one of the Toyota Design studios. But it gets even better: the winner and finalist works will also be displayed at Milano Design Week and Paris 2024 Olympics-Paralympics event.
This year not only the winners are able to get their hands on prizes and perks. In fact, it’s a well-established tradition within the TLDC to provide detailed feedback from industry professionals to our semi-finalists and finalists – to really push their projects and presentations to the next level.
As a part of TMHE Design Center’s collaboration with Vizcom, we are happy to provide the chosen semi-finalists with Vizcom accounts, so that they may harness the power of advanced Artificial Intelligence design tools to their advantage.
This year was our tenth Toyota Logistic Design Competition. And we’re very pleased. Again. Not least because nearly a thousand people, from over 50 countries showed they were keen to participate. We then received 160 bits of work, out of which ten made it to the final. New this year was we divided the work into three categories – industrial design, business innovation design, and UI/UX and service design. Selecting the finalists wasn’t easy, primarily because the work was of such high quality. But there you go.