ADU:Why do you enter design competitions?
Trent Jansen: There are lots of reasons I enter competitions. I think it can be a good way to get your work out there when you are first starting. As you get older I suppose you would still have the same reasons for doing it, particularly with international competitions because it broadens your horizons in another place.

The financial incentive is always there, because doing what we do in a place like Australia it is kind of one of the only ways to have some capital behind you so that you can continue to do what you are doing and put that money into new work.

Which competitions have you participated in over the last few years?
Bombay Sapphire Design Discovery Award. I took part in a competition with a Japanese textile manufacturer, and the Design Now! exhibition and award which is run by Object.

How do you choose which ones to participate in?
The open ones are better because often I just won’t have time to do something specifically for an award. Whereas if it is a really broad competition and if you have something nice that is lying around and you don’t know what to do with it, it is a good thing to do. But in saying that, the really specific ones can be nice too because they facilitate some specific solutions.

Have you ever decided not to enter a competition based on the brand that was running it, perhaps not wanting to affiliate yourself with that brand?
I definitely would. There are things that I have done in the past that I didn’t really think about at the time. I once did a project for Evian and I wish now that I hadn’t because I strongly disagree with the concept of bottled water. I guess my ethics were different at the time. There is a whole heap of stuff in Singapore that runs off the back of Philip Morris there and I wouldn’t have a bar of it, that’s disgusting.

How much do you think about the agenda of the organisations running a competition?
If it is something that has a specific brief, I have to, it would be stupid not to. But if it is a broader thing then for me, I guess it is the same with anything, I do it for my own reasons and if someone likes it than that’s fine. And if they don’t, they don’t.

How long on average would you take putting together an application for a competition?
It depends. All those Bombay presentations I spent a lot of time because I actually had to make work for them, often I would propose an idea that I was working on but it wasn’t finished, I would then have to make a prototype for that event.

What would be the most money you would have spent entering a competition?
I can tell you exactly! It was Bombay last year, and it was $4000 or $5000 for the prototype. If I think about the amount of money that I have spent on prototypes to enter that competition over the last four years, when I won the competition last year I probably broke even. But I think the benefits are something that you can’t put a price on.

Have you every had any problems with the fine print in competition briefs?
There have been some competitions that have said ‘We will own the right to that object or that design if you win, we will pay you a piddly design fee but we will never pay royalties.’ I would never enter those kinds of competitions because that’s ridiculous and it has the complete opposite effect to what it should be doing for the industry.

Do you put much weight on how a product goes in a competition? If you don’t win does that effect your decision to continue work on an idea?
No. I don’t think so. It is a good way to gauge some opinion. But at the end of the day I trust my own opinion more.

Which competitions do you respect the most?
Bombay definitely is the one with the best reputation. And Object's New Design/Design Now! Is something that has a great reputation for people who are just graduating because the people who have won that competition over the years have gone on to do good things. I think Adam Goodrum won, Stefan Lie… It has been a good gauge.

Adam Goodrum has said he would never enter something into a design competition that wasn’t already in production.
But he has had that experience, he has had manufacturers say to him that a piece had been published too much so they won’t touch it.

I have never had that. I have had people say ‘We are glad it hasn’t been published too much.’ Like Moooi were happy that my chair hadn’t been published heaps especially internationally. To be honest they didn’t really care that it had been published in Australia! They see that as such a small thing.

www.trentjansen.com

Interview by Madeleine Hinchy.

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