NEW YORK, July 17 /PRNewswire/ -- The Balance Sport Wheelchair, fuseproject's One Laptop Per Child XO Laptop and frog design's LED light bulb were among the winners of the 2008 International Design Excellence Awards. Student design thrived this year, capturing 16% of the awards given by the jury and 6 of the 35 gold prizes. Sponsored by BusinessWeek and presented by the Industrial Designers Society of America, the contest features 17 categories ranging from computer equipment to entertainment, and from design strategy to student design.
The globalization of design achievement was clearly evident at this year's awards. Europe is surging, with its corporations, consultancies and schools winning substantial numbers of awards. Asia is rising fast, with Japan back in force, joining China and Korea. And, for the first time, Latin America is making a strong impact. The United States held first place, taking 114 IDEAs, Korea came in second with 19 and Brazil ranked third, with 12.
A powerful sense of social responsibility ran through most of the winning entries. A jury favorite, and one of two Best in Shows, was the Balance Sport Wheelchair. Designed for physically challenged athletes, the wheelchair frees the hands to play basketball. The One Laptop Per Child project won two golds, one silver, and one bronze award. A gold in packaging and graphics went to Design for Democracy: Ballot + Election Design, a book that helps U.S. states design clearer, more useful ballots and polling place signs. Philips Design took a bronze for a more efficient wood-burning stove that cuts rural villagers' deaths from smoke-inhalation.
The second big trend in 2008 was the return to minimalism and elegance. Apple's gold-winning MacBook Air laptop and iPhone best represented this trend. So did the silver-winning Whirlpool Duet front-loading washing machine. Other winners were not beautiful but simply sensible. The Flip video camera by New York's Smart Design and Pure Digital Technologies is a pocket-size, easy-to-use videocam that employs no cables or complex software.
Featured winners of the 2008 International Design Excellence Awards appear in the July 28th issue of BusinessWeek (on newsstands Friday, July 18th). The complete list of winners, plus a searchable, sortable slide show and in-depth case studies, is available on BusinessWeek.com at http://www.businessweek.com/go/08/idea2008.
The top winners of the 2008 International Design Excellence Awards are: Design Firms Awards Gold Silver Bronze Total IDEO 1 4 2 7 fuseproject 2 2 1 5 Whipsaw 1 3 4 ZIBA 1 3 4 Ergonomidesign 1 1 1 3 Rockwell Group 2 1 3 Tools Design 1 2 3 Antenna Design N.Y. 2 2 aruliden 2 2 Carbon Design Group 2 2 Continuum 1 1 2 Hoberman Associates 1 1 2 ID + IM Design Lab 2 2 Modo 1 1 2 RKS Design 1 1 2 Scott Henderson 1 1 2 Corporations Awards Gold Silver Bronze Total Decathlon 3 3 6 Apple 3 1 4 Eva Denmark 1 3 4 Motorola 4 4 One Laptop Per Child 2 1 1 4 Samsung 1 2 3 Sony 1 1 1 3 3M 1 1 2 Belkin 2 2 Black & Decker 1 1 2 Dell 2 2 DKB Household/Zyliss 1 1 2 Hewlett-Packard 2 2 Lumini 1 1 2 Microsoft 2 2 OXO International 2 2 Philips Design 1 1 2
