About WDC Tenders

World Design Consortium Tenders are invitation only design competitions where design buyers have already signed a preliminary agreement for design procurement. Participation is free of charge for designers however only A’ Design Award winners are allowed to participate in order to have a high level of quality of entries.

Executive Summary

Design 3 Office Chair aesthetic styles for a big office furniture manufacturer Client, and then submit your work to A’ Design Award WDC Tender 20171205 Competition. Do it for experience, money and prestige.

Budget

Budget of the Client: 15.000 Euro for 3 Office Chair Designs. The project is for a one-time payment, no royalty fees involved, the payment will be lump-sum this time however for future projects they might prefer to work with royalties. The Client is indeed a large manufacturer and could potentially buy additional designs, so if we could please them with good work, we could for sure have repeat projects with them. If exceptional designs are presented, it could potentially be possible to convince the Client to pay also royalties as well, however, at this point they will not; if you are submitting designs know that there would not be royalty payments at first.

Benefits

• You get up to 15.000 Euro if Client buys three (3) office chair designs, all from you.
• Each eligible participant that submits a good design proposal will also get a free digital nomination ticket. It will be our sole discretion to decide what is a good design proposal.
• Winning participant also gets their selected works nominated to several further international design awards such as Reddot, If Design Award and A’ Design Award professional edition, sponsored by the Client.
• Your works, if selected as a winner, will be realized and manufactured.
• Your works, if selected as a winner, will be exhibited in IMM Cologne and potentially other famous tradeshows.
• Client will invest up to 500.000 Euro for creating the injection molds for your products which would be immensely mass produced.
• This is your chance to have millions of products signed by your name. Client can incorporate your signature to the molds and product.
• Client promises to run an advertising campaign promoting winning designers’ name in its origin country.
• You get up to three (3) chairs from the first production, one (1) of each of your design selected as a winning work.
• This is a good opportunity to have your name marketed and promoted.
• This is a Big Client, they need several designs each year, they might commission more works from you.
• You could really win this; this is an exclusive tender open to participation of past A’ Design Award winners only.
• You will get a chance to Travel to China, free of charge, all expenses covered by Client.

Design Brief

The Theme: The Client wants to have modern, European style Office Chairs. You will be very happy to know that you do not need to do extensive technical design, and you do not need to design the mechanical elements; Client has an engineering department and will do the engineering themselves, for sure making also subtle modifications to design to make sure the designs could be manufactured at a reasonable cost, this means that you could let your creativity talk without thinking much on the technical drawings. Number of Designs: 3 Office Chairs (1 Executive Office Chair, 1 Task Chair, 1 Visitor Chair), Client would prefer to have a product family, but they are also open for individual designs. Pro-Tip: It would most likely be easier to develop these three chairs as a single product family. Client needs Executive Office Chair, Task Chair and Visitors Chair. If you develop these three chairs as a product family, it is good to know that Executive Office Chair and Task Chair is almost the same thing except the Executive Office Chair has a taller backrest part and sometimes has even neck support but both Executive Chair and Task Chair have the same swivel base and the same seat, of course you could use the same armrest and mechanism as well. Task Office Chair and Visitor Chair share the same backrest, but Visitor Chair does not have a swivel base, instead in most cases, Visitor Chair would have a fixed, tubular steel base, and a Visitor Chair should preferably be stackable but of course you can do a good research and provide some suggestions. So indeed there are 2 type of backrests and 2 type of bases to work on. Swivel base is more or less standard, in most cases you do not need to design the swivel base, and you can potentially use an existing base from them [See Bases Here] furthermore, the Visitor Chair base should be tubular steel that is bended, so you do not think about that either. You should however focus on designing a beautiful backrest and armrest (taller backrest for Executive Office Chair, and shorter backrest of the same for Task Chair) as well as the overall silhouettes of the chairs. We would like to remind that you do not need to design a new mechanism, indeed you should preferably not design a new mechanism and use one of their existing mechanisms [See Mechanisms Here]. Since you do not design the mechanism, the project is actually quite easy; you will focus on the aesthetic design and the overall form. In any case, it might be a good idea to have Office Chairs that could be sold together as a product family since it is easier to develop a product family than to design three different chairs, of course the Client might also purchase exceptional one of chair designs from you, but you would prefer to sell three (3) designs as a family. Client is in China, and is especially interested in European Design for European Market. Client's target market preferences does not limit anyone’s participation (except that we only permit prior award winners from any A’ Design Award category to submit works). We will present the designs without nationalities and names to reduce any bias. Client has injection molding and metal tube bending, upholstery and woodworking technologies available, Client has a very big 850 ton injection molding machine, that could give 4kg of plastic push into the mold. Designs should preferably be based on injection molding as a base structure for backrest, back support, armrest, hand support and perhaps also for seating, and of course you could use fabric, leather, mesh, metal and other parts that could be outsourced or procured by the Client but always it is a good idea to think of costs and production when coming up with a commercially viable design. Use a search engine and search images for “Modern Office Chairs” : Client wishes to develop these products especially for European Market.

How to Join

Submit your projects at A’ Design Award website under the Competition: WDC Tender 20171205. The WDC Tender 20171205 is available at the list of competitions, and it is free to nominate a work to this particular competition. Use the standard A’ Design Award procedure and submission guidelines, just in the final step select WDC Tender 20171205. Deadline for entry is on 16 Januray 2017. It is a good idea to submit one (1) design only; so if the Client likes your first (1st) design, we could ask you to do two (2) more designs for the Client, that being said, you can submit as many designs as you like if you have the time.

Tips

You do not need to make the designs yourself; you can just oversee the project and let someone from your design team or one of your design partners to do the work. Finally, we want to remind to complete the nomination procedure after submission; after uploading the project, proceed with its nomination to WDC Tender 20171205 competition category, this special category is free to join but you still need to click the Nominate button so we could differentiate between drafts and completed entries.

Good to Know

Disclaimer: Upon Tender conclusion and presentation, the Client could occassionally choose not to buy any Design even if a winner is announced; if Client does not choose to buy any Design, there would not be any monetary compensation or any other benefits given to you, but you as the Designer, keep all the design rights. Even if the Client decides not to buy any design or select a real winner, we would still ask the Client to choose a honorary winner just to distribute nomination tickets as well as to register your WDC Tender winner badge. Being an honorary winner or even a winner does not entitle you to the benefits; in the end the benefits or any award prize could only be given if Client decides to buy your designs and pay for it. Finally, to make it very clear; if Client chooses a Winner and pays for the designs, it means they are buying your design rights, you will be obliged to transfer design rights to Client upon payment receipt.