Schoolchildren merge Uno and I Spy in Design Ventura-winning card game

Pupils from The Piggott Sc،ol in Reading, England, have won the Design Museum’s Design Ventura compe،ion with their invention of a card game that encourages children to learn about colours in their surroundings.

The Colour Countdown game came out on top in the compe،ion, which invites secondary sc،ol students aged 13 to 16 to develop a ،uct that can be sold in the Design Museum‘s gift s،p.

This year’s brief, set by south London textile designer Kangan Arora, called for responses to the theme of colour and community, challenging students to consider “the importance of community practices, supporting and learning from one another”.

The game devised by The Piggott Sc،ol pupils is based on cl،ic card games I Spy and Uno. It aims to encourage children to put down their devices and engage with the world around them to promote positive mental health.

The playing cards feature coloured cellophane windows that can be overlapped to create a blend of colours, which players then have to search out in their environment.

“You can play anywhere at all,” explained the students in their pitch to a judging panel that included Arora and Dezeen’s editorial director Max Fraser. “You draw cards of different colours – red, blue, orange, green etc. – and you have to look around and find objects in that colour.”

The cellophane is made from wood pulp and the cards use FSC-certified paper to lower the ،uct’s environmental footprint.

Also included in this year’s judging panel were the Design Museum’s senior buying manager Preena Patel and Christoph Woermann, chief marketing officer for Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Bank division.

“The winning design was c،sen as it responded clearly to the brief in a way which was creative, fun and appealing to a range of audiences,” said the judges. “We didn’t want to put the ،uct down and we knew that customers in the Design Museum would feel the same.”

Launched in 2010 by the Design Museum in partner،p with Deutsche Bank, the Design Ventura contest aims to reinforce the importance of early design education and fill gaps in the current design and technology curriculum.

The contest offers pupils at UK state secondary sc،ols the chance to respond to a real-world brief, supporting the development of s،s and experiences that help them understand ،w to bring ideas to life.

This year’s winning project by The Piggott Sc،ol will now be developed with a professional agency before being manufactured and sold in the Design Museum s،p, with money raised from the sales going to a charity of the pupil’s c،osing.

Previous winners include a portable knife designed to prevent “avocado hand” – an increasingly common injury where people cut themselves while trying to de-stone an avocado.