The pace of design has shifted from long haul projects to rapid deployment.

Towards the end of 2017 and another successful cycle for the DRIVENxDESIGN Award Programs we began to realise that we’d reviewed more than 7,500 projects or over 600 projects a month – the question was, were we doing enough to put timely information into the hands of design executives? 

The NOW Awards was launched – 10 editions a year covering the most outstanding projects we’d seen that month. Kirsten Mann joined me as co-host for a podcast to help fellow design executives tap into timely information.

Early into the third season, we began to see an immediate set of new projects all responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic. As we could no longer get together physically, we shifted format from podcast to Zoom sessions and invited along some of our peers.

Later, I had the privilege to spend an hour with Brian Collins - COO at COLLINS & Karin Soukup - Managing Partner at COLLINS. When the panel was discussing the review, none of us felt comfortable with the idea of it being an 'Award' - but we had to record the session. Brian had the same feeling, so we had a discussion about what it was. Karin suggested that the collection is not an Award, but a Spotlight...