Winner: Nando’s Hot Young Designer Talent Search 2018

WORDS Lindi Brownell Meiring IMAGES Theana Breugem

The winner of the Nando’s Hot Young Designer Talent Search for 2018 has been announced.

Selected from a group of 10 talented finalists, who themselves were chosen from 420 pattern design entries, Agrippa Mncedisi Hlophe took home this year’s title.

Agrippa Mncedisi Hlophe

Agrippa, who hails from Port Shepstone, designed a flowing pattern that represents continuity. “That’s why I went for circles,” he says in this clip about the 2018 finalists. “It’s a universal shape, and it represents unity and continuity. In life we all go through problems, and we go through rough patches where we’re forced to take difficult curves, where we fall and rise again, but when we rise, we rise with more knowledge and stronger hearts and minds.”

Agrippa Mncedisi Hlophe’s winning pattern design

Agrippa was announced as the winner of this year’s Talent Search at Keyes Art Mile in Joburg, which featured a magnificent installation of suspended chairs designed by Tracy Lynch of Studio Lee Lynch, all featuring the patterns designed by the finalists.

The designs were also translated onto lamp shades, which are displayed in the window of Juta Street store Anatomy, an installation also designed by Tracy.

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