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The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce’s (RSA) has announced details of its Student Design Awards, which challenge young designers to use craft and ingenuity to drive innovation.

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The awards, first launched in 1924, present young designers with briefs based on real world business issues affecting major brands and design organisations. Previous winners include Sir Jonathan Ive and Richard Clarke, global vice president of design at Nike.

This year there are eight briefs, with challenges ranging from designing sustainable toys to creating ways of connecting people to their heritage. For the first time there is an animation category and over £12,000 in cash prizes.

The winning work from last year includes proposals for new packaging made from beeswax, an alarm clock app to improve well-being amongst 18-25 year olds, an affordable sanitary towel for schoolgirls in low-income areas, and a frugally-designed hygiene pack for use in refugee camps.

Nat Hunter, RSA's co-director of design says: 'We want people to know that design isn't about prettification: design is the cornerstone of society's fight for positive social and environmental change. The RSA Student Design Awards exist to shine a light on some of our most difficult business challenges and create innovations to address them.

'For brands, they show how important design thinking can be in remaining competitive. And the Awards demonstrate to young designers just how widely they can apply their skills in industry - and how invaluable those skills can be in making change.'

Find the briefs here: http://sda.thersa.org/