There's a moment Inês Ayer chases in her work when design transcends its familiar boundaries. "What excites me most is that rare moment when design stops being just form and function and becomes a bridge," she says. "A bridge between emerging technologies and real human needs, between complex systems and simple gestures, between worlds that don't naturally speak to each other."

As Creative Manager at Google DeepMind, Inês operates at exactly these intersections. Her path to this role winds through continents and disciplines: from São Miguel Island in the Atlantic Ocean to Lisbon's Faculty of Fine Arts, from an internship at Superunion in Berlin to volunteer work at a school in Thailand. In 2019, she founded Studio Ayer, a practice that in three years collaborated with 12 countries on over 80 projects. Her education spans an MFA in Design Entrepreneurship from School of Visual Arts, a Master in Design for Distributed Innovation, and postgraduate work in Applied Management and Economics at NOVA business school in Lisbon.

Recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30, Inês has worked at AKQA, Instrument, and Pentagram while developing projects like Aliquoti, focused on reducing neonatal mortality for BIPOC women in the U.S. She's also a member of Global Shapers Lisbon, an initiative of the World Economic Forum, and has participated in programs including Decoding Creativity Barcelona, The Design Kids Lisbon, and United Nations SDG initiatives.

For Inês, design becomes most powerful "when it becomes a tool for futures: a space where imagination has consequences and ideas materialize to solve problems that don't even have names yet. That moment of translation, of anticipation, of speculative creativity—that's where I feel I'm doing my best work."

The Cost of Speed

Yet Inês carries deep concerns about the conditions under which contemporary design practice operates. "I worry about speed," she says plainly. "The pressure to produce, publish, iterate, optimize, measure, and prove value instantly. In that rush, design can shrink into being just an accelerator—not a question-asker."

Her worry extends to what gets lost when velocity becomes the primary metric. "I worry when we stop asking difficult questions because timelines say no. When aesthetics win over ethics. When our systems become more intelligent than the humans who rely on them." The risk, as Inês sees it, is existential: "If we don't slow down to think, design risks becoming decoration for the future instead of shaping it into something more just, more humane, more alive."

The Inevitability of Vision

As jury captain for the Visual Communication category in the 2026 Core77 Design Awards, Inês will be looking for work that reveals the designer's singular perspective and honest journey. Her advice to entrants cuts against the impulse toward polish and perfection.

"Show me why only you could have made this project," Inês says. "Don't just bring the final result. Bring the doubt, the detour, the moment you nearly gave up, the question that changed everything. Show me that your process wasn't automatic—it was intentional, vulnerable, curious."

What separates memorable work from merely good work, she argues, isn't flawless execution. "What separates a good project from a memorable one isn't perfection; it's the honesty of the journey and the clarity of your vision."

Her standard is high but clear: "If you can take me to the point where your work stops feeling like a proposal and starts feeling like an inevitability—you've won me."

2025 Winner

The 2025 Professional winner in the Visual Communication Category is Wayfinding Way Better: Metro's Wayfinding Improvements by the WMATA Team and including Jacobs Engineering, Entro, Order NYC, Joseph Chan, Ray Yau, Daron Showalter, Tom Proctor, Nick Palastro, and Brian Anderson. Metro refreshed its wayfinding and digital information systems to unify and elevate the customer experience through thoughtful design, better data, and contextual awareness. It brought together data, design, software, and human insights to create a more seamless journey.

If you have a forward-thinking idea that could spark a fire with our jurors, share it with us through the 2026 Core77 Design Awards.

Enter the C77DA before February 27 to lock in regular pricing.