Design & the Art of the Elevator Pitch

It's a term and a situation most entrepreneurs are familiar with: you have a sudden and very brief window of opportunity to present yourself and an idea to an extremely relevant person. Getting a chance for an elevator pitch is not a guarantee for success, but it can be an amazing opportunity.

For designers, the elevator pitch is a rare phenomenon. Few designers are trained to convey their designs and ideas verbally - and the chances that the talented young creative happens to carry their portfolio when the opportunity arises are fairly slim.

As a designer, you want to achieve exposure: even if only for a brief moment, you want to have a chance to be seen by those people who matter for your career.

So what are you going to do? Imagine you are a designer - how can you create an opportunity for an elevator pitch that is going to work for you?

We are not designers – at least we don't offer design work – but when we founded Faces of Design, we had a clear mission: to help connect companies and talented designers worldwide. Far too often, companies miss out on great opportunities, because they don't know where to find the right design talent; equally, far too many talented creatives don't get the opportunities they deserve, because they never manage to get their work in front of the right executive.

This is what we created the Faces of Design Awards for – in essence: an elevator pitch for designers.

Designer from every discipline, and from across the globe: intercultural and interdisciplinary.

More than 140 designers from 37 countries decided to seize this opportunity. In two rounds, they presented themselves and their work and were judged by some of the leading creative thinkers of our times.

Below, we are now presenting the 34 proud winners of the Awards. Their profiles are currently being distributed to over 1.000 key decision makers in the world of design, and additionally, the top three candidates are about to be introduced to a company of their choice in person, through the Faces of Design network.

When we decided to create the Awards, we were not entirely sure what to expect. We embarked upon a journey with an uncertain end, and we sweated with the candidates on every step of the way. Servers collapsed, software played up, files were lost and found again, hundreds of emails were sent back and forth between Berlin and some of the more remote corners of the world.

Having said that – we've greatly enjoyed the ride, and we certainly hope you will enjoy its outcome!

With all our best regards from Berlin,

Anna & Friedrich

Please click on the images below for an enlarged view!

The winners of the Faces of Design Awards will now be presented to over 1.000 key decision makers in the world of design in an elegant print publication.   Click here to download a pdf version of the Winners' Publication:

Take a sneaky peek at some of the contents of the publication:

Thank you all very much for participating,

and for your many encouraging notes, questions and tremendously helpful feedback! We are very much looking forward to creating more opportunities like this for you in the future - and of course we hope to see you again for the Faces of Design Awards 2011! Please keep in touch and let us know how you're doing!