TESTIMONIALS

When we heard about this contest, we were very excited!
I believe it's different from everything we ever made as designers. We had never worked with glass and was very challenging but very interesting. I think it's an amazing opportunity. This can motivate us as designers and will help us believe more in ourselves in the future.
It's just very good to see that our work and the hours we took are being valued and can actually become something bigger

I think this is one of the most important things when you are in the university. I think, especially when you are a designer, you need this to prove your value. Prove to people that you can do something that others will enjoy, and then you have more opportunities for jobs and studies.
It increased academic and professional knowledge and careers. I never won any kind of design contest. The experience was something that made me feel glad about what I do as a designer. It was amazing!

All this experience started in 2018, when I participated in the Glassberries Design Awards 2018, while I was at the University studying Industrial Design, and I was one of the finalists of that Award edition. And at that moment I knew what I wanted for my professional career, to work on something that fascinates me daily which is industrial design.

I continued with my studies always with my focus on becoming a better industrial designer every day. Three years later, I had the opportunity to contribute at a more professional level, from a designer’s point of view to the company that helped me define my path and in which its values ​​were also something I wanted to do by carrying out a professional internship.

There I had the opportunity to contribute with ideas for the packaging sector and more specifically for glass packaging, but also to learn (continuously) from more experienced people in the area, within BA Glass. With this internship I was able to technically evolve in various aspects of design, including industrial design, which is one of my goals. Being able to solve problems, present solutions and gain life workflow was very important for the beginning of my professional career. I am grateful for the opportunity and for the experience gained during the time I worked at BA Design, the BA Glass creative team.

The experience of being part of the Glassberries Design Awards has become the start of my professional career as a designer and an extraordinary opportunity to share my potential and ideas. As a student, I had the chance to share my design with other students and professionals of the sector and to understand how the packaging process works from de conceptualization of an idea, to the fabrication process. In addition, I also had the opportunity to make a design internship in BA GLASS, where I learned how to give shape to my ideas not just with creativity but also with technical tools, that helped me to have a realistic vision of how design works and how to become a real designer.

These competitions, when done professionally, are excellent for students, because they get the students and the design schools to think on many levels. One is realism: they actually got to design something for industrial design production. The second part is that they have the opportunity to see something realized and the third part is the agenda of working with a material, especially something like glass: on one hand it has been so much done, in the other hand there’s infinite opportunities... You can go on forever.

I just want to say I’m honored and I’m grateful that I got to help judge this competition and to meet some of the students here. What the Glassberries Awards is doing is fantastic! Obviously, it’s just going to grow and grow. And it’s a beautiful subject matter because glass is ecological, it’s sustainable, it goes on forever in a way. You break it, you grind it, it goes in a circle, it’s very cyclical. It’s a great material, and it’s a great agenda. It’s great that BA is doing this. Thank you!

We could not believe it! When all the prizes were already given we thought: well, there are two options: they forgot about us or...okay, we are the winners! Even in this situation, we could not believe that we were about to win the Golden Glassberry. We were overwhelmed! Surrounded by important people and designers such as Karim Rashid, we felt the satisfaction of having our work recognized by them and by a company such as BA Glass. It brought us tons of emotions and, for a moment, we felt invincible.

That was one of the best days of our lives. But that’s not all! The time for the internship arrived and even though we were a little bit afraid in the beginning, it turned out to be one of our greatest experiences, learning every day new things about the glass industry and its market. Now that we are here, we feel that a 3 months internship is just too short.

Winning the Glassberriess Design Awards was a great surprise and a big and beautiful experience for us. Being appreciated by such a large company, that deals with production on such an enormous scale is crucial, especially for the young designers as we are.

During our internship, we had the opportunity to become acquainted with the real life workflow. We had to deal with daily problems, which we are not confronted while designing at the university.

It was a fantastic experience thanks to the people we had pleasure to cooperate with. Wonderful designers and other experts shared their experience and knowledge with us, at the same time treating us equally, as pears.

The opportunity that BA gives is the best reward we can have, because training pays off in the future.

The Glassberries Design Awards was perhaps one of the best things that ever happened to me in life. I participated in the contest with the aim of challenging myself and doing something I had never done before; but never, in any circumstance, did I imagine that I could become a finalist, let alone one of the victors.

The Glassberries have me the opportunity to travel, to meet another country, another city and several fellow designers who share the same taste I have for design and the same ambition to take this passion as a career.

This job has been excellent for seeing and understanding the industrial process of a product from conception to production, as well for learning how to work as a team, how to respond to all challenges in the best possible way and last but not least important, to grow not only professionally but also as a person.

Who said that winning is not painful? Seeing 11 prizes being given out before ours is painful, extremely painful, but having our work being recognised by a company just as big and enhanced as BA Vidro is a great feeling of pride and self-accomplishment.

Everything became more real when I arrived on my first day of training and was encountered with a different reality from my academic world. I was absolutely astonished and this showed me what it is to work in the industrial universe.

Since the beginning that the course Degree in Design from Universidade de Aveiro has dedicated its last year to the relation between the social and economic fabric, observing the implicit constraints. The collaboration with Barbosa e Almeida, through the Glassberries contests, have come along with many other partnerships and for many years.

What really interests us is the comprehension of differences and the identification of common features, if there are any. On the contrary to what some people may claim, universities should not respond uncritically to the industry requests, but should in fact convert questions into drawings, products, images into words. If it is not a dialogue, then it will not be worth the effort of communicating, neither for the university nor for the industrial fabric. If this relation is expected, it will die soon.

Is that the attitude, which proves the respect for the interlocutor, who has nourished the work, the learning, the education and the training? Creating partners more and less perennial. The results obtained in this edition of Glassberries 2013 are so positive, and are a consequence, as so surprising as predictable.