Every year, the Creative Conscience Awards celebrate student work that tackles real social and environmental challenges through design. It's one of those competitions where the brief isn't just "make something that looks good" — it's "make something that matters." So when our students showed up this year, they really showed up.
Max Barker Takes the Grand Prix
Max Barker, a BSc UX Design student, won the Grand Prix for his project Conductor - the top award, given to one student, globally, per year.
Conductor is a system that syncs household appliances with surplus renewable energy. It's a beautifully considered piece of UX work that sits right at the intersection of sustainability, behavioural design, and practical problem-solving — exactly the kind of thinking we push for on the course. Max didn't just design an interface, he designed behaviour change, and system change, for impact.
What I find most exciting about this project is how it demonstrates what UX design can actually be. It's not just wireframes and user flows, it's understanding systems, understanding people, and finding the gap where a well-designed intervention can shift how we live. Max found that gap.
Graphic Communication Students Clean Up Too
The Grand Prix wasn't our only win. Our BA Graphic Communication graduates picked up a string of awards across the Graphic Design category:
Aleena Mehmi won Silver for End Of The World, a project responding to the climate crisis. Gosha Maslovskis also took Silver for a project addressing microplastics. Rachael Smith earned Bronze for UNMASKED, which explored equality and justice. And Rachel Cramp picked up Bronze for Glasgrow, a community-focused project.
Five awards across two courses, and every single one of these projects was driven by a genuine concern for something bigger than the brief itself.
Why This Matters
Competitions like Creative Conscience are important because they reward the kind of design thinking that actually moves the needle. It's not about aesthetics for aesthetics' sake — it's about using design skills to engage with the messy, complicated problems the world is facing - climate, equity, community, sustainability.
These students came through courses where we constantly push them to test their ideas with real people, to bring fresh thinking rather than copying what already exists, and to ground their creativity in research.
Massive congratulations to Max, Aleena, Gosha, Rachael, and Rachel. You've set the bar high.
You can explore the winning projects on the Creative Conscience website. Max's project Conductor is here.