Megan Williams, Staff Writer at Creative Review, chairs a panel with Tosh Hall, Global CCO at Jones Knowles Ritchie, Eva Yarza, co-founder and Creative Director of Yarza Twins, Stefan Knox, founder of Bang Creations and Katherine Wastell, Head of Customer Experience Design, Co-Op Digital, to discuss what makes good design as well as their personal selections from the Pencil winners this year.

Yarza chose The Most Challenging Pingpong Table by TBWA\Hakuhodo for Japan’s Para Ping Pong Table Tennis Association, which saw Japanese Para Table Tennis players help redesign a table from their perspective. The table changes shape to level the playing field. “I think this project is relevant today and it shows the struggle of other people, in this case it’s disabled athletes,” she says. “This project tried to visualise other people’s struggles.” The campaign created national media attention in Japan and drove up interest in para sports by 92%.

The JHF Table by Studio OPA, a lightweight, affordable, large metal table was chosen by Knox who fell in love with it immediately for its beauty, quality and efficiency. “I found myself looking at it and just thinking ‘how?’” he says. “I thought wow that’s really good design thinking taken to a new level.”

Wastell chose Recorder by Google, a recording app which recognises sounds, transcribes speech in real time and is searchable via keywords. For her it’s bang on trend in terms of speech activation. “What it’s done a good job of is balancing the polishing and the craft and actually making something useful, usable and enjoyable to use,” she notes.

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