How I prototyped the physical award of the Best Student Service Design Project 2025

A bit of context

Last Sunday, the Swiss Service Design Network gave out the Best Student Service Design Project done in Switzerland between June first 2024 and June first 2025.

I've been part of the team that organized the award, but wasn't part of the jury as many of the students are people that I follow every day within my work as a co-lead for the Master Service Design of the HSLU, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

We wanted to give out not just a prize but also a physical award that the winner could hold proudly. You know like it's done at the Oscars. With a jury, a ceremony, some cash prize and an object, the award then really feels real.

So we had to create a physical award.

First exploration: Off the shelf awards

I first explored if you could just buy an off-the-shelf award and personalize it. In fact there are lots of nice awards you can customize, and that costs you around 150-300 bucks with personalization and everything. Which is really fine.

But there was just a problem. I was fucking late with this. So I had one week to build an award, and there were bank holidays in the middle of that week. So even with some express shipping that wouldn't have worked.

Asking friends for 3D printing help

So I moved to something that could be quicker: 3D printing. It's not so much that 3D printing, it's just that I have friends who own 3D printers.

The only problem? I suck at 3D.

So I asked my good friend Loris Olivier if you could design for me the 3D object that I would then give to another friend to 3D print.

And so we got started. Now I just needed to brief Loris on what the 3D object should look like.

Using ChatGPT I quickly created a few mockups of possible 3D printed awards that I shared with Loris via text messages. I even tried to use ChatGPT to create the 3D file but that got me nowhere.

We quickly agreed on using the infinite sign of the Service Design Network logo as the main element and Loris started working on the design of the object. After a few iterations we were there:

The biggest challenge was on how to ensure that it was clear that this award was for Switzerland and not for the global community as there is already a student award given by the Global Service Design Network while also having something that can be 3D printed. Using the Switzerland SDN chapter logo wasn't possible as the lines were too fine and would have been a mess once printed.

So now we had a 3D file that could be printed.

Printing the award

I then sent the 3D file to my brother in law Stéphane, who has access to a 3D printer and he printed the object. It took a few hours and then we got it out!

It looked great, except... for the text...

Within the the text there were a lot of support structures that I had to remove, and it was really hard to get them out in a clean way. I tried for hours, but didn't really manage.

Stephane fortunately is a smart man. This time he changed the way the object was printed. Instead of printing it from bottom to top, he laid down the object so that it was printed from the back to the front. Which meant that there were no support structures needed within the holes of the letters which made it possible to have a very clean print:

So Saturday night the 3D print was ready.

Giving out the award

On the next day, we then gave the award during a little ceremony hosted during the Swiss Service Design Day 2025 to Cathy Lai, with some gifts from Valais and a little cash prize.

A good bug

I was late with this award thing. But in the end it forced me to go the route of 3D printing, which then made it possible to have a beautiful and fully branded award. A route that I wouldn't have taken if I had more time as I would have just bought an off-the-shelf award with a little customization.

Doing it again

Now I'm not late anymore on this, but I really love the idea of building a 100% custom award. So for next year, we're already working with my mate Loris to create a custom award but this time out of wood!

We've already started to prototype again with a few quick ChatGPT prompts and it already looks very promising:

A huge thanks to Loris and Stephane for making all of this possible in a record time!