FDSA 2025: Kimmie Tan on The One Academy’s capacity for influence

by Aisha Capulong

Kimmie Tan expands on how design is seen not only as art at The One Academy, but also an extension of what the world could become — and who could embody this better than our promising generations of youth?

We sat down with Kimmie Tan, Manager of The One Academy’s School of Interior Architecture and Design, during their MOU signing with the inaugural Future Design Star Award programme for a short interview on their involvement and her hopes from the institution’s future student finalists.

As Malaysia’s leading art and design college, The One Academy produces graduates who go on to join incredible firms in Malaysia and around the world. Working from an extensive bibliography built over its 33 years in the market, it is a given that The One Academy deeply understands the wide and constantly evolving discipline of design — making this collaboration with the Future Design Star initiative completely instinctive.

The One Academy signs MOU with Future Design Star Award

Exclusive interview with Kimmie Tan

How do you think the Future Design Star Award initiative will benefit your students at The One Academy?

I think it’s a good platform for our students! They get a chance to showcase their design, and at the same time, they get the chance to go to the regional level and compete with other students. If they are lucky, they will be invited for the [DOTY] Award Ceremony, where they’ll get to mingle around with industry players, so it’s a good opportunity for my students to get more exposure! They get to meet more people, so I believe they will get better prepared for the [industry].

What are your expectations from your students who will qualify for the Future Design Star Award?

I hope they can make it to the regional levels! That would be [a] big blessing. I hope they can make it big, and I hope that they always remember why they [came] into the design industry in the first place. I hope they will understand what impact [they] can make to [society] as designers and not just focus on selling their designs [and] earning money. The impact that [they] can make as a designer to improve society, improve the environment, I think that’s my biggest expectation [from] them.

Introducing the Future Design Star Award

The 15th installation of the DOTY Awards will see the introduction of an exciting new category: the Future Design Star Award! This new award initiative seeks to discover and platform young talents within verified design institutions across the nation whose work reveals an immense level of potential for the industry.

With a unique system in place, ACGMEDIA works directly with a handful of distinguished schools and academies across Malaysia to bottleneck only the very best projects — eliminating the ambiguity of participants and solidifying the relationship between the institution and its award candidate students.

The Future Design Star Award evaluation process requires each member institution to submit a fixed number of their very best student projects. The top three students of each school will then present to a panel of esteemed judges to compete for the ultimate prize: winning at the DOTY level. Following this, the three student projects that led the institutional stage will receive their win at the DOTY 2025 Gala Dinner, where they gain access to a crowd of Malaysia’s most elite design studios and industry partners.