Results of 'Grand Prix for design' were announced in Berlin
October 27, 2017
The German Red Dot Design Award has become an international benchmark for the design industry. Since 1955, the organization has acknowledged hundreds of innovative ideas. Now the new winners were revealed.
Image: KOREFE/Red Dot Award
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Red Dot Award-winning designs
Good communication design should be tempting, and draw people in. If it does, it merits a Red Dot Award. Often clever, sometimes questionable, the products are always fascinating.
Image: denkwerk gmbh cologne/Red Dot Award
Give or take?
Design for a good cause: On "Fashion Revolution Day," this vending machine by Berlin designers BBDO lured people with a two-euro T-shirt offer. If they inserted the coin, they were confronted with photos of the clothing workers' inhumane working conditions - and asked whether they would prefer to donate the two euros. Ninety percent of them said "yes."
Image: BBDO Berlin/Red Dot Award
Give - it's simply more fun!
Residents of the New Baraka slum in Dakar, Senegal, want to build a better future. Online, they posted a list of what they need. The website makes helping them easy. A click on a photo is a donation for schools, lumber and shower stalls. The design by Denkwerk GmbH convinced the jury because it is easy to use and provides an upbeat depiction of how to help people help themselves.
Image: denkwerk gmbh cologne/Red Dot Award
Free advertising
Art needs to be promoted, too. The façade of the new building of the Art Museum Basel is surrounded by a frieze of embedded LED lights, a subtle advertising platform aimed at attracting passersby into the museum. Fascinated by the "poetic expression of the sophisticated interaction of form, architecture and light," the jury awarded the Red Dot Award Grand Prix to this concept.
Image: Derek Li Wan Po/Christ & Gantenbein/Red Dot Award
Freshly packaged coconuts
Some products are definitely unnecessary. These bags designed in Taiwan contain green coconuts, complete with a lid and a pull tab to get at the coconut water. They are admittedly convenient and beautifully designed - but knowing that oceans are brimming with plastic waste, wasn't the coconut itself simply the most perfect packaging already? This design nevertheless won a Red Dot Award.
Image: Vetica Group AG/Red Dot Award
Play on words at a steep price
Take another look: this is not a fragrance, it's a detergent! The jury liked the "unusual idea that brings innovation into the less than exciting detergent market." Nice to have, but only as long as you don't look at the price tag: a whopping 68 euros ($72) for a one-liter bottle. People who can afford it presumably don't do their own laundry, but their household help might enjoy the scent.
Image: KOREFE/Red Dot Award
Snap, crackle, pop!
Who could resist? This poster for a photo exhibition in Hong Kong is printed on bubble wrap - the photographers focused on noise, which is inescapable in Hong Kong. You can virtually see the racket on the poster - and add to it by popping the bubbles. This interactive element was probably tested extensively by the jury and by everyone else who saw the poster.
Image: Ray Man Photography/Green Hill Communications/Red Dot Award
Long waiting list
Arabic-speaking refugees can resort to the app "WhatsGerman" for their own personal German language class, a new lesson every day on their smart phone. The idea netted Munich designers Plan.Net the award Best of the Best and Agency of the Year. All award winners are on display until May 21 at the Red Dot Design Museum Essen.
Image: Plan.Net/Serviceplan/Red Dot Award
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Red Dot Award-winning designs
Good communication design should be tempting, and draw people in. If it does, it merits a Red Dot Award. Often clever, sometimes questionable, the products are always fascinating.
Image: denkwerk gmbh cologne/Red Dot Award
Give or take?
Design for a good cause: On "Fashion Revolution Day," this vending machine by Berlin designers BBDO lured people with a two-euro T-shirt offer. If they inserted the coin, they were confronted with photos of the clothing workers' inhumane working conditions - and asked whether they would prefer to donate the two euros. Ninety percent of them said "yes."
Image: BBDO Berlin/Red Dot Award
Give - it's simply more fun!
Residents of the New Baraka slum in Dakar, Senegal, want to build a better future. Online, they posted a list of what they need. The website makes helping them easy. A click on a photo is a donation for schools, lumber and shower stalls. The design by Denkwerk GmbH convinced the jury because it is easy to use and provides an upbeat depiction of how to help people help themselves.
Image: denkwerk gmbh cologne/Red Dot Award
Free advertising
Art needs to be promoted, too. The façade of the new building of the Art Museum Basel is surrounded by a frieze of embedded LED lights, a subtle advertising platform aimed at attracting passersby into the museum. Fascinated by the "poetic expression of the sophisticated interaction of form, architecture and light," the jury awarded the Red Dot Award Grand Prix to this concept.
Image: Derek Li Wan Po/Christ & Gantenbein/Red Dot Award
Freshly packaged coconuts
Some products are definitely unnecessary. These bags designed in Taiwan contain green coconuts, complete with a lid and a pull tab to get at the coconut water. They are admittedly convenient and beautifully designed - but knowing that oceans are brimming with plastic waste, wasn't the coconut itself simply the most perfect packaging already? This design nevertheless won a Red Dot Award.
Image: Vetica Group AG/Red Dot Award
Play on words at a steep price
Take another look: this is not a fragrance, it's a detergent! The jury liked the "unusual idea that brings innovation into the less than exciting detergent market." Nice to have, but only as long as you don't look at the price tag: a whopping 68 euros ($72) for a one-liter bottle. People who can afford it presumably don't do their own laundry, but their household help might enjoy the scent.
Image: KOREFE/Red Dot Award
Snap, crackle, pop!
Who could resist? This poster for a photo exhibition in Hong Kong is printed on bubble wrap - the photographers focused on noise, which is inescapable in Hong Kong. You can virtually see the racket on the poster - and add to it by popping the bubbles. This interactive element was probably tested extensively by the jury and by everyone else who saw the poster.
Image: Ray Man Photography/Green Hill Communications/Red Dot Award
Long waiting list
Arabic-speaking refugees can resort to the app "WhatsGerman" for their own personal German language class, a new lesson every day on their smart phone. The idea netted Munich designers Plan.Net the award Best of the Best and Agency of the Year. All award winners are on display until May 21 at the Red Dot Design Museum Essen.
Image: Plan.Net/Serviceplan/Red Dot Award
7 images1 | 7
Every year, the world's biggest design competition is an invitation to the top rung of product designers and companies. Anyone can send in existing products for consideration, and past winners range from a smartphone to a lemon press and a toothbrush.
An award for DW
This year, Deutsche Welle's relaunch of its lifestyle magazine Euromaxx won an award in the category of Communication Design. "The fresh studio layout where we use real decoration with augmented reality has given us new possibilities on how to stage the show, and the look as well," said Rolf Rische, the head of DW Culture.
The elaborate, photorealistic 3D animation, which is the core of the Euromaxx redesign, was conceived by a Munich agency Luxlotusliner in collaboration with the DW design department and the set designer Andreas Bergmann.
From Essen to the whole world
The Red Dot Design Award was born in 1954 in Essen in western Germany with one mission: to facilitate an appropriate design of the environment for the public at large.
Since then, the organization has grown up to be an international benchmark for all categories of product design, and has even opened museums in Taipei, Singapour and its birthplace where the winning pieces are exhibited.
This year alone, about 5,500 manufacturers and designers from 54 countries submitted new designs for the "Red Dot Award: Product Design," more than ever before.
Others vie for separate prizes for communication design.
Something for everyone
Brands and designers can compete in 48 product design categories that include computers, yachts, tools, furniture, but also jewelry, baggage, eyewear or washing machines.
This fact has been criticized in the past by German designer Achim Schaffrinna, who wrote for Design Tagebuch ("Design Diary") in 2012 that "the award is given up to 830 products annually," and that he wished the award had been an "actual seal of quality."
The winners of the Red Dot Design Award will be revealed at the opening gala on October 27 in Berlin.
