Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2013. We will be featuring these projects by category, so stay tuned for your favorite categories of design! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com.

• Project Name: Diageo Guinness Keg
• Designers: Jonathan Doyle & Rebecca Mooney
• National University of Ireland Maynooth

Diageo has used the same problematic system for storing draught beer for several decades. Our design project was to address the problems they are having with costs, maintenance and staff safety. We designed a one-trip keg that can be shipped from its filling point and then are recycled after the beer is consumed. The new Guinness Keg allows for injection moulding making it lighter and cheaper. Maintenance is no longer a factor as the keg is destroyed after use. The reduced capacity of 20 litres means that kegs will be changed faster reducing the chance of a bad pint.

- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

We watched the live feed but unfortunately had to switch it off for a class midway through so we had thought we had not won. During a quick break we went back to the video and saw our project in the thumbnails under the video. We were all excited to see that the project had been chosen as winner of the Student Packaging Design category as we are a new course with only two years graduated so far.

- What's the latest news or development with your project?

We completed the project for college and now have continued to make boards and graphics for our college design show which was sadly cancelled. We are hoping to possibly hold our own event to showcase our work as well as our fellow classmates in Dublin soon.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

The project brief itself came from Diageo as they wanted a fresh student perspective on the problem of the current keg design. We went out to St. James Gate and pubs to discover and identify these problems. Through our design process we came up with our Diageo Guinness Keg. It is fully recyclable and addresses the problems of staff safety, beer quality, brand identity, ecology and much more.

- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?

Our entire design process was built on an Oscar Wilde quote from the Ballad of Reading Gaol:

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!"

The existing keg design and our concepts were what we had to kill. We developed some concepts far into the process before leaving them and going back to another. So it is quite difficult to say where our "a-ha" moment was. It was a far more gradual and slow process to get to our final design.

View the full project here.

Project Name: Hjertemod (Heart Courage) Designers: Fuglenes Venner (Pernille Posselt, Michael Sørensen, Simon Friis) School of Visual Communication, Denmark

How to get more people to register as Organ Donors? Instead of talking about facts/reasons, 'Hjertemod' is about the idea of awakening feelings and believes, making organ donation present by creating a product they can receive and touch and feel. We created an alternative way of approaching people with an intangible subject through product and packaging design. On this foundation we could build a brand/movement in which people could believe. We became inspired by young people, who display their believes, celebrate life and death and want to change the world. This state of mind, live while respecting death is 'Hjertemod.'

- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?

We followed the aftermath of the live show and saw our project had been chosen as student notable!

- What's the latest news or development with your project?

We presented our project for the client, but at that point, they had already started working on a new campaign. They were however very impressed, and we were given much credit for realizing many of the same things and thinking many of the same thoughts, that they had payed a real bureau to discover.

The project is by far one of the best projects in our portfolios, and it has been recognized and blogged a few times since its completion.

- What is one quick anecdote about your project?

We had a feeling pretty early on where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do and what we wanted to communicate, but making it a reality proved difficult. We went through a long and important creative process, narrowing in on what the essence was. We arrived at a state if mind... a special way of thinking and feeling alive. The word we used to describe it became "Hjertemod" (Heart-courage).

This was a new word in the Danish language, and we decided to compose three sentences to describe what it means to have hjertemod:

Hjertemod/Heart-Courage is... to make an immortal decision in a mortal moment Hjertemod/Heart-Courage is... to make your mark on the world, if you don't, you haven't existed Hjertemod/Heart-Courage is... an act of love to life and death

We now had the name, our tone of voice and with that we could communicate.

- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?

We had 8 weeks to make this project, which included the entire research and planning phase for the project, the creative and conceptual process and the design execution. The research, creative and conceptual phases went like a breeze, but our design phase was a completely different ordeal. One week before deadline we decided to throw away our entire (near complete) design, start from scratch, work our asses off and come up with a new design that went completely beyond the previous one. Our greatest "a-ha" moment was to realize how better our project became when we decided to "kill our darling" work harder and make something better.

View the full project here.