The NDGGRANT 2025 has been decided!

This year’s NDGGRANT goes to a project that meets all three criteria – originality of concept, relevance and effective communication. Another project receives a Special Mention.

NDGGRANT 2025: PASSAP Rhizom

The PASSAP knitting machine is a Swiss original from the 1930s – and a popular tool today. The PASSAP Rhizom project aims to preserve, archive and make accessible the expertise associated with it. Designed as a platform, the project aims to curate a digital archive and act as a forum for exchange, communication and collaborative research. Laura Schwyter and Eileen Good combine practical knowledge with design, technology and social history. Their original contribution to design memory and their passion impressed the jury and led them to unanimously award them the NDGGRANT 2025.

NDGGRANT 2025 – Special Mention
The School of Design Bern and Biel. An abécédaire for two hundred years of design and artistic professions in the canton of Bern

This hybrid publication on the history of the School of Design Bern and Biel combines a book with a digital archive. The project, led by Juliane Wolski, deserves special recognition. It offers in-depth insights into the region's educational and design cultures and shows how the interplay of craftsmanship, industry, pedagogy, and social change has shaped the development of design professions.

Acknowledgment NDGGrant 2024

Publication project “Women in Swiss graphic design
1900-1980”

Since the beginnings of the professionalization of Swiss graphic design in the late 19th century, numerous female graphic designers have created posters, illustrated books, designed brochures, advertisements, packaging and exhibitions. They attended graphic design classes at arts and crafts schools, set up their own studios or worked for well-known agencies. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, female graphic designers have fallen through the grid of design historiography and their biographies and works are often forgotten.

The publication is a follow-up project to the “Rid the Grid” exhibition shown at the Poster Collection Basel in 2024. The publication also aims to increase the visibility of women in Swiss design history with precisely selected positions. Around 25 female graphic designers from all over Switzerland, who were active between 1900 and 1980, are presented in pictures and text and their work is embedded in the context of design, social and economic history. What training and career paths did the graphic designers follow, what fields were open to them, were they also successful abroad? The graphic work of the protagonists is embedded in a design-historical context. This includes stylistic classifications as well as the inclusion of the changing technical possibilities over the course of the 20th century.

The relevance, urgency and thoroughness of the project convinced the jury to award the NDGGRANT 2024 to the three initiators and authors Sandra Bischler, Isabel Koellreuter and Franziska Schürch.

NDGGRANT Special mentions:

Hans Coray's prior knowledge when designing the Landi chair

With his proposal, Sébastien El Idrissi shows how important it is to look closely at the prior knowledge of designers in order to understand a design. Knowledge of Coray's ethnographic studies of agricultural implements can better explain the design decisions. Due to its curatorial potential, the project “Hans Coray's prior knowledge in the design of the Landi chair” receives a Special Mention from the jury.

Of elephant feet - form, connotation and inspiration in product design

Gianna Rovere shows the winding paths that inspiration takes in product design. Take the elephant, for example: it appears as a proverb, as a formal borrowing or as a reference to content in numerous designs. Pursuing these surprising references and bringing them to the attention of the public makes this proposal remarkable. Due to the originality of the communication format, the project “On Elephant Feet - Form, Connotation and Inspiration in Product Design” receives a Special Mention from the jury.

Ekistiks: Archive of the Urban Age. Designing a research method

Eric Häuser and Simon Nougué use digital visualization tools to open up the contents of a magazine on the subject of urban planning. They are investigating the value of images, models and visualizations as autonomous knowledge generators and whether they help us to gain a new, visual understanding of history. Due to the innovative digital research approach, the project “Ekistiks: Archive of the Urban Age. Designing a research method “ receives a Special Mention from the jury.

NDGGRANT

NDGGRANT supports projects by NDG members that deal with design culture and design history in various forms and is held annually.

Objective
NDGGRANT supports NDG members in their professional activities to research, discuss and disseminate design history. Members can apply with a project to receive financial support, recognition, national and international networking and visibility. This way, the NDG promotes high-quality, original proposals that strengthen diverse practices of 'making design history' in Switzerland.

The call supports propositions for, among other things, the release of publications, the curation of exhibitions, the organisation of a symposium, the creation of a vessel for collaboration and publicity, and research activities.

The grant primarily supports projects that open up little-known and little-researched subject areas or current and newly emerging design historiographical methods.

Eligibility
Applicants must be members of the NDG in the year the project is submitted.

Selection criteria
The following criteria will define the selection of projects: (1) originality of the concept, (2) relevance to design historiography, and (3) convincing form of communication.
Applications for travel expenses and expenses already incurred (no retroactive support) and submissions that do not meet the tender criteria will not be considered.