Savoir Beds Design Grand Prix Headboard Competition

Luxury Bed maker Savoir beds are running a competition to give design school students the opportunity to work on a ‘live brief’ to design a bespoke headboard.

I heard about this competition last year from a fellow KLC student, the lovely Mary-Ellen on her blog HOP Interiors.  As I read the article I thought, ‘I could never do that’, yet here I am, six months later with the confidence to give it a go!

This year’s theme is ‘Organic’, and it makes me think of nature, trees, leaves and the undulating curves of Gaudi architecture.  I look up the dictionary definition for ‘Organic’ for inspiration.

Browsing through my gardening books and flickr I’m filled with ideas, and begin to solidify them in my sketchbook.

sketches of some of my original ideas

I decide to go with the design based on the Travellers palm as I love the symmetry of the fronds, the vivid colours and the way they cross to create a geometrical pattern.

The brief requires an isometric drawing and an elevation, so I try my hand at sketchup, yikes!  Seemed like a good idea at the time…

Approximately 100 hours later, after lots of help from google and trial and error, I’m kind of happy.

So design finalised, I have to find an ‘organic’ fabric to make it from that’s luxurious enough to grace a Savoir bed.

Organic cotton or linen would make the design look too rustic.  I thought about ‘Peace silk’, made without harming the silkworm, but Silk isn’t practical for a headboard.  Taking the ‘derived from living matter’ part of the dictionary definition literally, I think of Salmon skin leather, it’s beautifully textured, practical and luxurious.  Best of all it is completely organic and made from the waste skins produced in the food industry. Exotic fabric from rubbish, brilliant!

I decide to go for the Bordeaux colour, as it is very similar to the red in the travellers palm and I think the green would be too obvious and a bit much…

Like most competitions these days it’s an annoying facebook ‘likey’ thing, and only the top twenty most popular people on Facebook get through to the final stage.

Unfortunately this means I have to beg for votes to be in with a chance of getting in front of the judges.  So pretty please vote for me if you like the design and have a facebook account.

1. Go to the Savoir Beds Grand Prix Page
2. Log into facebook
3. Click ‘Go to App’, then ‘Accept’ (I know, annoying)
4. ‘Like’ the page in the top right
5. Click ‘Vote’
6. Fill in your name and click save
7. Click ‘Go to entries’
8. Browse the entries (don’t worry there are only 80) to find mine, look for the image of the Travellers Palm (the entries are shown in random order).
9. Click the little green ‘like hand’ in the bottom left, under my image.
10. If you get number of votes goes up e.g. ‘you and x users have voted for this’ then your done!
11. Pat yourself on the back for getting through that ridiculous voting process! :)

I completely understand if you gave up at step 3!  Thank you if you managed to vote and if not then thanks for reading this far!

Some people I’ve spoken to think Salmon Leather is a bit odd, would you buy a headboard made from it?

Update: 09/07/2012 designlint has been shortlisted!!  I’m one happy bunny today :)  Huge thanks to everyone that voted, I really appreciate your help x

Tagged as: Competition, headboard, KLC student, Salmon Leather, savoir Beds