IDSA Announces Winners of 2009 International Design Excellence Awards

The winners of the 2009 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) competition—a celebration of year’s most innovative and exciting product and product concept designs and one of the world’s most prestigious and recognizable design competitions—exhibit a focus on sustainability, functionality and, in some cases, breathtaking aesthetics. Additionally, a recent trend toward designing products and concepts for underserved or underprivileged markets continued to be in evidence when BusinessWeek, the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), Target and Autodesk announced the winners yesterday.

Out of 1631 entries, 31 were awarded the coveted Gold award, while 47 received Silver awards and 72 won Bronze awards, while 349 finalists were named in addition to the winners. This year’s jury, an international cross-section of design leaders led by Andrew Hartman, Philips Design’s design director, new business, bestowed this year’s “Best in Show” award to Nike’s Trash Talk, a performance basketball shoe made from manufacturing waste. This shoe, championed by NBA star Steve Nash, incorporates as many leftover materials—leather and synthetic leather, foam and rubber—as possible without sacrificing any of the performance that comes with shoes made from virgin materials.

Demonstrating the continued value of the IDEA program internationally, 66 designs from 15 countries outside the US were given an IDEA Award: Australia, Brazil, Canada, People’s Republic of China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, The Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. 2009 also marked the second year of IDEA/Brasil, organized by Objeto Brasil and endorsed by IDSA, to spur interest in design from Brazilian corporations as well as to heighten global awareness of Brazil’s rich design heritage. Six winners were honored with IDEA Awards this year, a testament to the exceptional design being created in Brazil as well as the remarkable success of the IDEA/Brasil program for another year.

The commitment to sustainability was the hallmark in products such as the Better Place Charge Spot, Dell Studio Hybrid, Energy Seed and Coca-Cola Refresh Recycling Bin. A sense of social responsibility drove the creation of winners such as the Kitten Scanner, the Project Masiluleke Home HIV Test Kit and The Next Generation Perkins/APH Mechanical Braille Writer®. And the striking aesthetics of Apple’s MacBook and 15-inch MacBook Pro, Samsung’s BD-P4600 Blu-Ray Disc Player and LED 7000 Series (the world’s slimmest LED TV) and the ICON A5 Amphibious Sport Aircraft were also among those products recognized by this year’s jury. The continually-increasing number of student entries and student winners from across the globe demonstrates the future of the design profession is in good hands.

Samsung of South Korea was the top winner from the corporate world, claiming eight awards, while Apple claimed seven, Dell Experience Design Group claimed six and GE Healthcare claimed five. The jurors were captivated by the WEDZE Virtuous, a ski jacket with a removable, inflatable vest that allows you to decide how warm you want to be; impressed by Teneo® Storage Furniture, a storage system whose 20 parts can be used to create 80 different products, and wowed by the BTS! Dual-Cooking Oven, which offers the versatility of a double oven in one oven, prompting juror Claudia Kotchka, Affiliate IDSA, to remark “this is an entry which falls in the ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ category.”

Among design firms, IDEO captured eight awards this year, while NewDeal Design received four awards, and ASTRO Studios, frog design and fuseproject each received three awards. Korea’s Samsung Art and Design Institute/Samsung Design Membership Program topped the list of college wins with a total of eight awards, while Art Center College of Design received five.

The 2009 jury, comprised of 20 world-renowned designers and design thinkers, spent weeks previewing entries online and two-and-a-half days of intense, face-to-face evaluation and debate on IDEA. Judging criteria for each entry focused on eight areas of industrial design excellence: design innovation; benefit to the user; benefit to the client/business; benefit to society; ecological responsibility; appropriate aesthetics and appeal; usability testing; rigor and reliability (Design Research category); and internal factors and methods, implementation (Design Strategy category).

A “People’s Choice” award will also be presented when the winners are honored in a formal ceremony at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel in Miami on Saturday, September 26, the final day of the anticipated 2009 IDSA International Conference, followed by a gala celebration. Winners will be displayed in the Conference Design Gallery. All 150 winners with descriptions, photos and contacts are now featured on BusinessWeek and IDSA’s web sites.