Looking good in the winners gallery
Awards season is upon us, and if Design Week’s awards results are anything to go by, creativity is on the up and the industry is becoming stronger, says Lynda Relph-Knight
If creative awards say anything about the business, then things are looking up for design. Two best of show awards indicate a strength we haven’t seen for years, as do winners in all but one section.
Particularly strong this year was the product design section, divided for the first time between consumer and industrial products. But packaging has also made a big comeback.
We’re still to see the big corporate identities make a killing in a creative award scheme, but this year’s shortlist shows a variety of identities for smaller concerns.
Interiors work was still in the doldrums last year, when this year’s contenders were being completed. We have great winners in the Royal College of Art’s R Café, designed by three RCA students, and Ben Kelly Design’s reception area for ad agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe, but the retail selection was disappointing.
Significantly, the three shortlisted projects – two fashion stores by Din Associates and one by RPA Europe – were for overseas clients, who appear to have looked to tried and tested UK design solutions rather than innovation in their schemes.
Furniture also has a great winner in Fred Scott’s simple stacking chair for UK manufacturer Allermuir. But the field was not as broad as we would have liked, and we will be taking steps to interest more independent furniture designers in entering the Awards.
Apart from our 17 winners of the main categories, this year’s awards also yielded a number of commendations. These went to: Rodd Industrial Design’s leaflet dispenser for London Underground (industrial products); Radley Yeldar’s 1995 annual report for the Steel Burrill Jones Group; brochures by The Partners for Citibank and Still Waters Run Deep for itself; Michael Wolff for Royal Mail greetings stamps (direct mail); The Identica Partnership’s Stick It packs for The Sellotape Company and Lewis Moberly’s ice-cream wafer packs for Askey’s; Channel 4’s NBA basketball idents by The Moving Picture Company; and the Objects of Desire exhibition, by Ben Kelly Design for Glasgow International Festival of Design 1996.
THE WINNERS
Best of show
Sponsored by 3M Spraymount
First aircraft seat
Design Acumen for British Airways
Waitrose Premium soups
Turner Duckworth for The John Lewis Partnership
Consumer products
Sponsored by Concord Lighting
Kyomi bathroom range
Queensberry Hunt Levien for Ideal Standard
Industrial products
Sponsored by Concord Lighting
First aircraft seat
Design Acumen for British Airways
Corporate identity
Sponsored by Inveresk
Urban Productions
Eureka!
Annual reports
Sponsored by Real Time Studio
PolyGram 1995 report
Johnson Banks
Promotional brochures
Sponsored by Curtis Fine Papers
The Depot
Zulver & Co for Southwark Council
Direct mail
Sponsored by Tullis Russell
The Picture House 1st birthday invitation
EH6
Posters
Sponsored by Design Week
Back at last
HGV for Green Room
Overexposed
The Partners for The Association of Photographers
Calendars
Sponsored by Precision Marketing
1996 Thrislington Cubicles calendar
The Partners
Branded packaging
Sponsored by Mullis Morgan
NRG energy drink
Haines McGregor for SmithKline Beecham
Own-brand packaging
Sponsored by Wace Group
Waitrose Premium soups
Turner Duckworth for The John Lewis Partnership
TV Graphics
Sponsored by Quantel
ITV weather idents
Tutssels with The New
RenaisCAnce for PowerGen
Multimedia
Sponsored by Rebus
Action Man website
The Hasbro Design Studio for Hasbro
Reception areas
Sponsored by Atrium
Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe London offices
Ben Kelly Design
Retail environments
Sponsored by Epsom
No award
Restaurants
Sponsored by Design Week
R Café, Royal College of Art
Nathalie Le Leval, Chris Howker and Andrew Jones for the Royal College of Art Student Union
Exhibitions
Sponsored by The Design Show
Mysteries of Ancient China, British Museum, London WCThe Design Office of the British Museum
Furniture
Sponsored by Robert Webster
Nile chair
Fred Scott for Allermuir
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