Designathon is Lollypop Design Studio’s flagship event, and it’s conducted on a yearly basis to commemorate designers and their design spirit! It’s a 24 hour Design hack, where students come from top universities to our studio and compete in teams to win the title of Designathon. This time it was on a much larger scale, because not only did we conduct it in Bangalore, but we also took it to two other huge metropolitan cities in the country, Chennai and Hyderabad.
The success of the event ignited a light in all our spirits, and as we yet again wrote another chapter in our design story, this one was definitely worth reading and one of our biggest milestones achieved.
Designathon, sponsored by Upstox and CreditVidya, which are some of the leading corporations today, surely casted its spell on all of us present. Continue reading this article to feel the spellbinding magic of Designathon and the power it possesses in bringing the design community together!
This time, we conducted our design hackathon in three metropolitan cities of India – Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai – in order to open gates to as many young designers in the country as possible. The outcome? It was an incredible celebration of design in three cities simultaneously, with talent bursting till the brim and a night filled with over 200 young designers brain-storming in competitive spirits to come up with the best design solutions to problems prevalent in our society.
This could be counted as one of the first times in India that a design hackathon has happened on such a big scale, and so smoothly, in three cities at once, and we’re super proud to have achieved this feat! As a design studio, we couldn’t be happier to open our doors to more and more designers, and watch them shine throughout this wonderful festival in all the three cities.
Our crowd at Designathon was extremely diversified, as we had designers and design students come in from different parts of the country, with some of them even coming in from other countries, belonging to different cultures with different experiences. This definitely served as an added advantage for the teams, because it inadvertently contributed in producing varied design solutions, with an added touch of diversified cultural ideologies. We received over 25 design solutions from these young participants, and might I add, each and every solution was different and stood out from one-another. Hosting these designers was definitely a privilege, as they all had different stories to tell, which inspired us even more and collaborated in making it one of the most surreal experiences.
We welcomed some leading industry pioneers as a part of our jury, along with our design leaders to guide the participants and provide mentoring on the spot, whenever they required, and also traced a path that would help them manifest their creativity into coming up with innovative solutions. This opened a lot of opportunities for the students, and a lot of them stated that the advice that they were receiving from these leaders has definitely helped them improve their decision making skills, which would result in aiding them in the future during their design journey. Some of our participants additionally mentioned that the creative space that we reinforced through Designathon, in which our design leaders consistently inspired them to work with other designers and come up with solutions collaboratively, had freed them from a mental block that they were experiencing!
Hence, Desiganthon enabled a platform for our attendees to network with leaders and peers, which helped them grasp more information and thus grow!
Every year we encourage designers to work on real-life problem statements, in teams, and come up with the best design solutions. This adds value to their portfolio which in turn helps them get more opportunities and work with renowned brands to produce incredible designs!
These young university students are provided with an opportunity where the environment is completely stimulated to create an experience that all design professionals working on live projects face today, such as researching, brainstorming with a team, creating mock-ups, personas, designing wireframes, as well as branding. Thus, this entire event really contributes in a huge way by adding so much value in the work that they will be producing in the future, and really giving them first-hand experience before they step into the industry, with an idea of all the problems that they might face while working on real-life projects as well!
To put on such an amazing design event for all of our participants, Designathon is an ensemble effort of all our tribe members, and they surely left no stone unturned. The crew works tenaciously to put together a design festival that will live long in the memory. The work usually begins three months prior to the event, and includes everything from working on collaterals to operations to providing food and refreshments throughout the 24-hour event, ensuring that the designers are equipped with everything they will require during the design hack.
It is wonderful to have a team that profoundly wants to unite the design community and actively works to revolutionize design across the country!
The design community is growing by every passing hour, and people are gradually waking up to the importance and power that design possesses. I always feel as though I’ve met a part of my family whenever I run into a designer, and it is always lovely to hear their story and share mine. The mission of Designathon has always been to bring together the design community and facilitate knowledge sharing through experiences and different perspectives. Bringing passionate designers together is always inspiring, as it unwittingly helps induce curiosity about what’s going on in the design world, and also lends a helping hand to any designer who’s in need of it!
Check out this video to see how spectacular the biggest design event of 2023 was.
Designathon 2023, sponsored by CreditVidya and Upstox, was undoubtedly an unforgettable celebration of its kind and a glorious event for all of our designers who came, conquered, and made it such a huge success. We are especially grateful to have witnessed the unwavering flame that all the young designers have promised, since it was an event that ignited a spark which will continue to blaze for many more years to come.
It has been tremendously encouraging to see over 2000 candidates from all around the world so eager to join the design hackathon, and we vow that from next year forward, it will only get bigger and even better. This year, we unquestionably elevated the standard of our design events, and we’ll continue to do so moving forward. We’ll think of more innovative ways to make the next editions of Designathon even more spectacular, and brainstorm ways to provide even more opportunities to our fellow designers. We’ve definitely cultivated a culture of design through this festival, and it has undoubtedly helped propel the development of a design culture, so let’s continue to channel our magic into expanding the design community not just in India, but throughout the world!
Last but not the least, we want to extend our heartfelt gratitude to our amazing jury, which included Anil Reddy, Founder and Design Director at Lollypop Design Studio, Poornima Vaidyanathan, Experience Creative leader at Merkle, Dentsu Global Services, Kingsley, Founder and Director of UXMint, Pratik Mehta, VP of products at Prefr(CreditVidya), Aunindra Sinha, UX Design Manager at Indeed and Sneha Ramamurthy, Product Manager at Rolls-Royce, London. This event would not have been as successful without your assistance and the expertise you brought to the panel.
