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

Start the discussionStart the discussion
  • Post a comment

Latest articles