Young Designers Challenge Winners

The Industrial Design students from the University of Johannesburg collaborated with Vermont Sales and HOMEMAKERS to bring the most cutting edge ideas to life. This year the idea was for young designers to design products that change and improve people’s lifestyles.

Top products were on display at the Expo where the winning design was chosen. Visitors can expect to see innovations around smart water tanks, tech-savvy kitchen sinks and taps, home organisers and AI assistants, smart kitchenware and smart tools.  Read on to find out which young designers won!

Winner Katlego Madumo with Costa Stavrakis from Vermont Sales.

The overall winner was Katlego Madumo who designed The V56 Smart Hedge Trimmer. The hedge trimmer was inspired by his passion for nature and green living. The first runner-up was Loubser Meyer who designed the TRITON MT101, which is a smart combination seen that monitors the wear on internal components and informs the user of any bad machine practices. The saw also prevents circular saw kickback, which ensures the safety of the user. 

Natalie Selibas was also a runner up. She designed a smart dustbin created to encourage recycling and bring esthetic appeal to the home. Most importantly, the bin was designed to make life smart and simple. This is done by automatically creating a shopping list based on the goods you throw away. Now if that’s not genius, we do not know what is! 

The commendation prize went to Michal Shushan who designed the Festool smart automatic food stirrer that solves the problem of constantly needing to attend to the stove while cooking, as well as knowing when your food is ready.

The winners won a cash prize from HOMEMAKERS Expo and a special prize from Vermont Sales.

Find more inspiration here.