Doug Mockett has announced the winners of its annual design competition. This contest has grown over several decades and attracts professional designers, students, and hobbyists. This past year's entries continued the tradition of celebrating new design.

Nathan Gates is a senior industrial design student at Appalachian State University. His punny design earned him a place among our 39th Annual Design Competition Winners. With his “Stop” doorstop, Gates created an eye-catching and unique piece that playfully blends form and function.

"I essentially came up with a play on words of a “doorstop.” My inspiration for the design was more playful but still following Mocketts design language," Gates says. "For example, one of the previous winners - their design was an exclamation point wall hook. I wanted to use that playful[ness] but also serious design principles in my designs as well."

Faith Apostolodes is a mechanical engineering student at SUNY New Paltz with a background in construction, electrical work, and solar energy. She’s passionate about creating thoughtful solutions that meet manufacturing and end-user needs. Her “Vertex” shelf bracket is a culmination of these elements.

"The Vertex Shelf Bracket is really simple design - a prism shape that can be mounted in multiple ways," explains Apostolides. "The inspiration for the design was really just to take everything that I wanted in a shelf bracket as the person who would be installing it. Since I've been doing construction and electric work on the side for a few years now so, with that experience, I basically just knew what I would want in a bracket if I was using it, which is flexibility and being able to mount it multiple ways or have some wiggle room and finding a stud or being able to use extra screws where I need, and the shape lets me do that."

Kevin Helm is the owner and designer of 2Point54 Designs. After spending years in oil and gas marketing, Kevin sought to foster his creativity, went to school, and started his own business. His solutions reflected the high-quality designs that his grandparents' furniture was crafted with. Inspired by those principles and the silhouette he saw of an axe against the wall, he created the “Boomerang” coat hook.

"So the inspiration for this design came from axe-throwing, just seeing an axe sticking out of the target. I kind of like the visual of the base symmetry of the axe head versus the handle," says Helm. "I thought there could be something interesting there. And also, growing up with my older brother, he was constantly throwing things at me and just seeing things get stuck in the drywall kind of led to the inspiration for the design. I wanted something functional. You could tell what it is and what it's meant to do, but something that had kind of a couple of unique features to it." 

To read the full interviews of the winners, visit Mockett.com.