Innovate sponsored an associate prize for the New Designers Show 2018: Innovate – helping inventors Ingenuity Award; with inventiveness, cleverness and commercial viability as key criteria to look out for. Alastair Swanwick, MD; Alex Bell, Senior client manager and Dan Walklin, Product designer, all judged the competition.

This year, with his ‘Talon Ball Device’, Swansea College of Art graduate, Nicholas Thatcher was a clear winner for the Innovate team. Alastair commented that Nicholas’ product was "the most extraordinary piece of engineering in the exhibition hall and beautifully prototyped. Quite ingenious!" -  We love a wacky invention! As well as this recognition, Nicholas wins a paid for 4 week internship at Innovate’s Salisbury Studio. Take a look at his product and more of his creations at www.thatch-industries.com.

This year Innovate also highly commended 3 other projects, selected by our judges to be particularly clever designs. Here were our winners:

James Hern from UWE for his work station standing foot stool. Dan chose this product and had this to say about it: "Fantastic simplicity in the design compared to existing products on the market. Great Product!"

Luke Lutman from the University of Gloucestershire for his 3D plastic material recycling device. This was Alex's choice. He described it as "An innovative concept that looks at the 3D printing process and reduces waste in a useful and sustainable way. A clever and practical solution!"

And Dan Purnell from UWE for Halo Tube and sea rescue device. Alastair’s comment was: “Simple design, easy to produce and highly effective improvement of the existing models".

Well done to everyone who took part in this years New Designers Show. We thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to welcoming Nicholas to the Studio soon.