Branson Centre Collaborates with Clout/SA

Great South African Méthode Cap Classique bubbles meet innovative South African design in a collaboration between the Branson Centre, Clout/SA and Nando’s Hot Young Designer finalists

PRIMROSE CHIMHANDA

As entries streamed in for the 2022 Nando’s Hot

Young Designer (HYD) talent search, South Africa’s leading young designer competition facilitated by Clout/SA, we carried on working and collaborating with many of the finalists from previous editions of the competition who have become an integral part of our growing design community.

When the Branson Centre, the Virgin Group’s social enterprise accelerator, was on the lookout for ways to share its passion for South African creativity as part of its corporate gifting, Clout/SA stepped in to facilitate a one-of-a-kind collaboration with some of the Nando’s HYD finalists.

The project saw the finalists’ pattern designs interpreted onto a selection of Méthode Cap Classique bottles. The designers from the 2018 leg of the competition were Primrose Charmz and Zinhle Sithebe, alongside winner Agrippa Mncedisi Hlophe and pattern designer Glorinah Khutso Mabaso, a co-winner of Clout Designers' Industry Days 2019, another Clout/SA initiative fired up by Nando's.

The patterns had initially caught the eye of the judging panels at both Nando’s HYD and Clout

GLORINAH MABASO ZINHLE SITHEBE

Designers' Industry Days — not only because of their undeniable aesthetic appeal, but also because of the quintessentially South African stories they told, which drew on personal narratives as well as local culture and heritage.

Zinhle’s design found inspiration in the popular Zulu tyre sandals, imbadada. She translated the sandals’ familiar black, white and red geometric shapes into a bold contemporary graphic pattern, giving it an unexpected twist with the addition of blue.

Glorinah also looked to our heritage for her pattern, which celebrates the rhythm of the drum across different local cultures. For Primrose, the nature that surrounds us was a key inspiration. Her design began as an interpretation of the shapes one might see inside a chilli when cut in half, and it developed into a stunning and complex geometric pattern.

Agrippa, meanwhile, created a new colourway and interpretation of the design that eventually earned him the top spot in Nando’s HYD in 2018. The design took inspiration from his own personal journey. He wanted to create a flowing pattern that represents continuity and, as he explains it, “a reminder that in life we all go through problems and 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 with] stronger hearts and minds.” Indeed!

As Clout/SA, we’d love to give a joyful shout out to our design community who are always on hand with original ideas, as well as to the Branson Centre for its support of local creative entrepreneurs. o

AGRIPPA HLOPHE