I’m delighted to say that Harry is the winner of the Cambridge Consultants Associate Prize for Breakthrough Design for 2024 – part of the prestigious New Designers awards. We’ve sponsored the prize for quite a number of years now and we’re always really inspired and wowed by the quality of talent that’s on show.

Every year we make a point of inviting the award winner and runners-up to our head office on the Science Park in Cambridge for a prize-giving reception. Ahead of the day of celebration, I had a chat with Harry to get under the skin of his award-winning design – an ingenious desktop photographic development system called ‘Format’.

“It’s a professional-grade desktop developing system for photographers who still have a passion for shooting with film,” he explained. “And it’s great for its merits to be recognised like this. To get an award from a renowned technology company like Cambridge Consultants is special because it shows that innovation and design for a particular niche area is appreciated by the industry.”

Industrial design that understands user needs

Just like the design teams here at CC, Harry did his homework to identify user needs first. “I spoke to many different photographers, engineers, designers, lots of different people. Understanding those user needs was very much the driver for the eventual concept. It was also an area that really interested and stimulated me.

“I admired the work of a lot of professional photographers, and I thought maybe there was something in that field that was in need of innovation and I decided on film developing. Shooting with film is getting more popular every single day and wedding photographers are particularly in demand because people love the nostalgic feel of film when they see it.

“Unfortunately, the cost of film – and the need to send if off to laboratories to be developed has sky-rocketed. My solution is a desktop developing system with a modular three-in-one platform for processing, drying and scanning, with advanced chemistry control to ensure the perfect picture every time.”

What particularly impressed me about Harry’s design was his ability to transform a complicated, multi-step process into a home-use device with a much simpler user experience. Harry’s design combined meticulous attention to detail internally and externally. As for aesthetics, Harry made a point of relishing the details. The system echoes film camera design, with a sheet metal aluminium housing resembling the housings of Leica cameras – but combined with the matt black aesthetic of professional digital cameras.

Industrial design detailing

Our CC judging team for the New Designers prize were as impressed as me. They summed up Format like this: “Excellent simplification of a complex professional system into an intuitive home-use design. We appreciated the stunning visualisations and astute industrial design detailing. The fantastic attention to detail when resolving internal factors was second to none.”

Praise indeed, and well-deserved Harry! And before I sign off, I want to give a shout out to the outstandingly talented runners-up for the Cambridge Consultants Associate Prize for Breakthrough Design at New Designers. Well done and thanks to the amazing Ollie Harper (Flow – a wearable irrigation pump device for ostomates), Rosie Monteith (Caesarean birth recovery innovation) and Archi Smith (Okko – a customisable platform of ambient technology to deliver reminders to users).

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