Product design excellence award winners announced

Apple, Philips, Decathlon and design consultancy Ideo are among those honoured for ‘innovative’ and ‘ecologically conscious’ product design as part of this year’s US International Design Excellence Awards scheme.


French outdoor brand Decathlon, Danish homewares brand Eva, Motorola, Apple and One Laptop Per Child have been announced as winners for the innovation, user-benefit, ecological responsibility, aesthetics and reliability demonstrated in their product design.


The annual event is organised by the Industrial Designers Society of America and Business Week.


Decathlon has picked up six awards, with the remaining companies each scooping four.


The jury was impressed by the Eva Solo waste bin – a bin that, it says, ‘solves every common problem found in most current designs’ – while singling out the One Laptop Per Child XO Laptop.


Decathlon’s incorporation of a dual-element structure and self-inflating mattress into a sleeping bag, with the aim of making outdoor pursuits appealing to an audience who would never normally consider camping, was cited as a ‘brilliant design for an even better cause’.


The jury also bestowed two best in show honours for the first time in the history of the competition, to Apple’s iPhone and Size China, a design research project that assembled data to create the first-ever digital database of Chinese head and face shapes.


Among design consultancies, international group Ideo scooped seven awards, while Fuseproject, Whipsaw and Ziba picked up five, four and four awards respectively. The Zeppelin iPod dock for speaker brand Bowers & Wilkins, by UK design consultancy Native Design’s Morten Warren, scooped a gold in the entertainment category.


This year’s entries ‘exhibited a focus on sustainability, attention to detail and, in a slowing economy, many offer surprisingly affordable price points’. Designing existing products for a new market was also a trend in evidence, says IDSA executive director Frank Tyneski.


This year’s awards yielded a total of 1517 entries, with 35 gold, 77 silver and 93 bronze awards. There were 109 designs from 25 countries around the globe.


Business Week’s IDEA report, an in-depth analysis of the winners, is published today. See www.businessweek.co.uk for further details.


For more information on judges, winners and winning entries, visit www.idsa.org.


The IDSA will hold a ceremony to celebrate the IDEA winners on 13 September, coinciding with its annual national design conference.

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