Category — Awards

We wrote about the gold prize yesterday, but the 2010 JCD Design Award top prize went to the Kyoto-based capsule hotel 9h. Congratulations to Fumie Shibata (creative direction and product design), Masaaki Hiromura (graphic design) and Takaaki Nakamura (interior design)!

Spoon & Tamago profiled 9h back in March. You can read the post here.

click images to enlarge |  tree page marker by megumi takagi

Happy Earth Day! …what? You say that was yesterday? But every day is earth day, right? Ok, I’m just trying to make up an excuse for not posting this yesterday, which was my original intent. I wanted to share some work from the recent Konica Minolta Art and Eco Awards. I briefly covered this last year, but decided to pay more attention to it this year. And I apologize for the lack of consistency in images but they were scarce and I had to dig them up from multiple sources.

The first place prize went to Remo-Kuma, a polar bear that controls the use of electricity in a household. Created by Shozo Kuze and Mariko Sakamoto, the polar bear responds to head petting, back rubs and butt pats. Check out the cute video below!

Although they lost out, I was fascinated by some of the other entries such as this Knot chair by Miyashita Tomoya. It can be configured to accommodate almost any kind of position.

Image courtesy of legiter

One of the most gorgeous entries, in my opinion – hence the numerous images – were these Tree Page-markers by Megumi Takahashi, an editorial designer. They function almost identically with those grass pagemarkers except these, as curiosity mounts in a certain book, a forest grows, rather than a yard of grass.

Images courtesy of tsui design

The markers depict several varieties of trees and each blade of paper is made from its respective tree. Lovely.

One other piece that caught my eye was Icicle by Fujita Manabu and Takuma Yamamoto, of design unit PLUS. It was made from thow-away straws that are plentiful in any fast-food joint.

Image courtesy of mycom journal

click images to enlarge

Seasons, a functional kitchen and serving ware designed by Nao Tamura, has won the Salone Satellite Award at Milan Design Week 2010.

The plates are inspired by Japanese customary traditions of using leaves as decorateive objects in the presentation of food. In the Spring, cherry tree leaves are used to wrap sweets. In Autunm, fallen folliage is used to decorate the table. Leaves are also used as dividers when presenting an assortment of dishes.

image courtesy of designboom

Snow Magazine via Designboom

Related:

• Milan Design Week 2010 | Japanese Design

The Kokuyo Design Awards 2009 were just announced yesterday! In case you were wondering, the Kokuyo Design Awards is one of the largest and most anticipated design competitions in Japan. Hosted by stationary-giant Kokuyo since 2002, the competition has spawned popular products such as the kadokeshi eraser.

This year they received over 1,500 applications with the intent of selecting only 1 grand-prize winner that would be eventually commercialized and released to the public. The number of applications is up from 1,200 in 2008 but down from a high of 1,700 in 2007.  Using this as a gauge for popularity, they still tail the MUJI Awards, which boasts over 4,000 applications. (The Good Design Awards, which encompass a much larger scope, receive around 3000 applications) Interestingly enough, MUJI recently announced that it has canceled their awards this year. Perhaps it has something to do with the economy? I know what you are thinking. Enough rambling and get on with the results right? Right. One final thought… I wish they would provide more pictures/angles.

The grand prize went to Nao Asanuma for his Roots work table, which uses concave legs to create a sleek table that can peacefully coexist with computer cables.

Here are some of the ideas that took home the silver. Below is Kazunari Kodama`s Flower Tack. It is a simple idea that gives an utterly mundane object some much-needed attention to detail.

This is probably my favorite. The Margins notebook by Shohei Ono, a communication design student at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. The reimagining of margins of a standard notebook completely blew my mind! The expansion of white space gets the imaginative juices flowing. I can come up with any number of new uses and suddenly have the urge to take notes in class.

Black and White Graduation by Kaneko Hisahide is another great idea. By printing the numbers on a ruler in both black and white you eliminate the contrast problems encountered when working on multiple colored backgrounds.

I was also impressed by some of the honorable mentions, such as TO-GENKYO`s Eraser With a Core that fits around pencils. You may recall these designers as I profiled them a couple months ago with their Fresh Label.

Lastly is Primary Colors by Liu Zhi-Qiang and Ye Ming-Jie of the design unit DOUBLE. The pait pallette is an ingenious yet simple way to help kids learn about mixing colors. It is truly one of those designs the prompts the obvious question, why didn`t someone think of this before?

Last night Suntory’s subsidiary Midorie announced the winner of their first-ever Midorie Design Contest. Midorie launched its services in 2008 and offers rooftop and wall surface greening that utilizes Puffcal, “an originally developed sponge-like soil substitute” that is lighter and more versatile than soil. The guidelines of the contest were to use Puffcal in an innovative fashion to create green-design.

The winners were the members of the design studio kenma, who proposed OSUSOWAKE (which means sharing, in Japanese) a planting system that could be grown and then divided  in order to distribute to friends and family. Recipients can then combine them with any existing Puffcal plants that they may have, creating a unique plant that becomes symbolic of the ties and connections you have with others. The proposal completely rethinks the notion of plants and goes beyond the possibilities that conventional potting soil offered which, in the end, won them the award.

Here is the official press release (Japanese PDF) where you can see some of the runner ups, which include planters that can be stored in bookshelves and planters that act as umbrella stands, feeding off the dripping rainwater.

Related:

• Suntory Midorie

Masahiro Minami was kind enough to send over images of “Chonmage Yookan“, a design that took first place in the recent Tokyo Midtown Awards. Judged by Japan’s design elite (Kenya Hara, Manabu Mizuno, et al.) as having perfectly blended humor with regular yet astute design, the piece shined over its 1300 peers in the “New Gifts from Japan”-themed competition.

Indulge me as I try and awkwardly articulate the genius behind Minami’s design. In this case, “gifts” often refer to apologetic peace offerings that husbands bring home to their wives after late soirees of boozing. To define the terminology, chonmage is a topknot of hair, one of the most significant ornaments of the samurai and represents honor and esteem. However, the cut-off chonmage, used as a motif in the images above, reflects the downfall of the old samurai and the absence of the pride and honor that supported him. Yookan is like sweet bean jello and is popular as a choice for gift giving. Combine the two and you have an apologetic gift that represents the submissive retraction of honor, an act that is sure to smooth the nerves of any enraged wife.

Related:

• Pizzly Bears on Melting Ice by Masahiro Minami
• Designing Design by Kenya Hara
• Kenya Hara Retrospective Part I, Part II, Part III
• Good Design Company

I completely forgot to write about this last week but I wanted to highlight the winner of the 2009 id Design Awards. Ryoji Takahashi (who works in the design unit of an unnamed company) created this awesome hand functioning paper shredder that quaintly rests on any desk. One of the reasons that I have never been able to buy a paper shredder is because they are all so big and ugly. With the Paper-Pipe Shredder not only can you save on your electricity bill but it actually looks nice on your desk! The winning design gets commercialized so we can look forward to this one hitting stores in the near future.

Related:

• idsite – a great resource

Happy Friday! I’ve been giving my own personal preview of the Good Design Awards throughout the week and I’ll be wrapping up with the Digital Content category today. It would be cool if some of my picks end up winning but I don’t have very high expectations…

Website: LINK
Client: Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Tech
Designer: Business Architects
Government agencies, by nature, are distant and somewhat mysterious. MEXT wanted to change that perception and help people understand what they really do. The result is a fun and inviting website that includes tons of statistics and documents archived in an interactive format that encourages people to make their own discoveries.

Website: LINK
Client: Hamano Bags
Designer: Risky Brand
Hamano, perhaps one of Japan’s oldest maker of luxury leather goods, was first established in 1880 but had been making leather sword holders for the samurai even before that. Clients included Princess Dianna and other notable royalty, making their brand an obsession amongst the wealthy. The relaunching of their  brand via a new website symbolizes an important move in increasing their presence among their European counterparts.

Related:

• Good Design Awards | Part 1
• Good Design Awards | Part 2
• Good Design Awards | Part 3
• Good Design Awards | Part 4

Trudging along with my previews of the Good Design Awards, we approach the New Frontier category (not really sure what that means) and the Poster & Campaign category.

Title: Fresh Label
Designer: TO-GENKYO
This was a very clever design that tracks a foods expiration date using a universally accepted visual. Over the last year or so Japan had been struck by a number of scandals involving food companies tampering with expiration dates. The new design keeps people honest by changing colors based on the level of ammonia the food emits as it ages. After it has passed its expiration date the barcode is no longer readable, making it impossible to sell.

Title: The Hall of Fame Calendar
Designer: Word Shop
For: Misawa Home
Continuing a 21-year tradition, Misawa Home’s corporate calendar adopts a theme each year of famous individuals (artists, architects, musicians, etc.) and devotes 1 month to 1 individual. They then scan a database of handwritten archives extracting numbers and letters to create a calendar. Each month you are encouraged to delve into that person’s history and learn something you never knew. For 2009 they decided to devote the entire calendar to Natsume Soseki, perhaps the best known novelist in Japan.

Title: Truths only kids can see
Designer: Dentsu
For: Kadokawa Tsubasa (a maker of kids books)
Lenticular printing is a very common technology often used in ads that morph as you walk by them. But by simply rotating the printing from horizontal to vertical you create a banner that varies depending on the person’s height. This way they succeeded in creating an ad that only kids can read. In a country where enormous pressure is place on kids to perform well on test scores, the company wanted to convey a message to kids that they are their own beings. They don’t have to listen to everything adults tell them. The message on the banner reads, “If you listen to everything the boring adults tell you, you will turn into a boring adult.” Subversive yet cute!

Related:

• Good Design Awards | Part 1
• Good Design Awards | Part 2
• Good Design Awards | Part 3

Forging along with my preview of the Good Design Awards, today we enter the architecture category.

Name: N2-house (carved out house)
Architect: Architect Show
By creating an incision in the façade the architect has invited the outdoors in, while maintaining a level of privacy and comfort. The emphasis on straight lines also contributes to a feeling of openness and freedom.

Name: House & Yard
Architect: Terajima Architects
Building in central Tokyo comes with all sorts of obstacles, such as the denseness and proximity of neighbors and the prevalence of high-rise apartments and office buildings. By incorporating the Japanese character Ko (コ – basically a sideways U) into the design of the courtyard the architect managed to create an abundance of greenery that can be seen from any room of the house.

Related:

• Good Design Awards | Part 1
• Good Design Awards | Part 2