Tag Archives: Good Design Award

Good Design Award 2023 Crowns its ‘Grand Award Winner’ – Here are the Top 5 Finalists

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Established in 1957, the Good Design Award, also known as the G Mark, has served as a beacon of excellence, shining a spotlight on outstanding designs that push boundaries, enhance daily life, and contribute to the betterment of society for over 6 decades. From industrial products and architecture to communication design and digital media, this illustrious award covers a wide spectrum of design categories.

Winning the Good Design Award is highly regarded and can significantly boost the reputation and marketability of a product or design. The recipients are granted the right to display the ‘G Mark’ logo on their winning products, indicating their commitment to quality and design excellence.

The selection process for the Good Design Award is rigorous and involves a panel of experts from various design fields. They evaluate entries based on criteria such as innovation, functionality, aesthetics, environmental impact, and user experience. The award is not limited to Japanese companies or designers; it is open to international submissions as well.

The Award revealed its 5 finalists, of which one of them was crowned the ‘Good Design Grand Award’ winner (Long House Senior Daycare Center by ALL FOR ONE Co., Ltd.). In addition to the main award, the Good Design Best 100 and Good Design Long Life Design awards are also presented. The Best 100 recognizes the top 100 designs of the year, while the Long Life Design Award honors products that have maintained their high design quality over an extended period. Scroll below to see the Top 5 Finalists for the 2023 Good Design Award.

Click Here to View the Good Design Best 100 winners for the year 2023

Long House Senior Daycare Center by ALL FOR ONE Co., Ltd. (Grand Award Winner)

This welfare facility is specifically created to cater to the needs of the elderly. Its design draws inspiration from the traditional Japanese porch known as “Engawa,” which encourages locals to visit in a relaxed and informal manner. Moreover, it serves as a community hub for welfare, fostering a sense of togetherness among the elderly, children, and local residents, who can rely on each other for support during challenging times. The town-like architecture of the center emphasizes a state of independence, allowing the occupants to be more inclined to help each other and live out their lives rather than relying on a ‘system’… however, bathing, toileting, and eating are provided as routine services. The community fosters a spirit of humanity within it, relying on altruistic acts of kindness that help it be a model society for its occupants. People are encouraged to visit their family, help out with their daily lives, while children are taught the importance of servitude by being encouraged to help perform duties like watering the garden.

Panasonic Lamdash PALM Electric Shaver by Panasonic Corporation

It’s common for grooming devices to have a hyper-ergonomic design. Look at razor handles or the shape of beard trimmers, for starters. The truth is this isn’t purely ergonomics, it’s also something called a ‘category code’. People are more likely to recognize a product by its shape, so if all beard trimmers have the same overall design, they’re clubbed into the same category, making it more effortless for users to understand and buy. The Panasonic Lamdash PALM, on the other hand, goes a different route. Inspired by the grippy design of a well-rounded pebble, this compact shaver is interesting to look at while also being reliable to hold onto and maneuver across your jaw. The five-blade linear motor shaver sports a hyper-compact design that lets it cut down on large, unnecessary parts, helping save materials by as much as 30% and lower the shaver’s overall production impact without sacrificing function. This hyper-compact design also makes it perfect for traveling with!

Prius Passenger Vehicle by Toyota Motor Corporation

The Prius remains an absolute icon in its impact on the transportation industry as well as pop culture for how rapidly popular and ubiquitous it became with hybrid cars. However, as more and more cars are switching to alternate powertrains like hybrids and EVs, the Prius is finding itself competing against many more companies. Faced with this challenge, Toyota decided to design the newer models of the Prius keeping two things in mind – “A design inspiring love at first sight” and a “captivating driving performance” that doesn’t just focus on environmental impact, it focuses on the thrill of being behind the wheel too. Conceptually referred to by Toyota as “Hybrid Reborn”, the new Prius focuses on an exterior that resonates with modern sensibilities, evoking the feeling of love at first sight, and an interior that combines a functional layout with an emphasis on operability and extensive safety equipment in a space with a high-quality feel.

NHK Citizen Lab Social Platform by NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation)

Designed as a response to the pandemic, the NHK Citizen Lab hopes to build a new information platform that connects researchers and the public to facilitate citizen science activities that yield discoveries through collective knowledge. With the spread of smartphones and other devices, data such as photos and videos can be easily sent anytime and from anywhere, creating a haven of consumer-driven data that can be analyzed for the betterment of humanity. Meanwhile, there are many researchers who are unable to conduct large-scale studies because they are unable to secure sufficient research funds. The Citizen Lab, created by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, helps create a bridge between these researchers and the public. “We devised a plan to create a win-win relationship by leveraging the dissemination, appeal, and reporting power of the public media NHK to convey researchers’ thoughts to citizens in an easy-to-understand manner,” says the team at NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation).

Kamiyama Marugoto College of Design, Engineering, and Entrepreneurship by
KAMIYAMA Educational Institute

The national and global spotlight is currently shining on “Technical Colleges” as a potential source of clues to address Japan’s pressing issues, including a declining birthrate and aging population, regional depopulation, economic stagnation known as the lost 30 years, and the frequent occurrence of severe disasters. Located in the Tokushima Prefecture, the Kamiyama Marugoto College of Design, Engineering, and Entrepreneurship’s vision is to establish a cutting-edge technical college in a beautiful natural setting, where students can develop specialized skills that combine the arts and sciences in technology, design, and entrepreneurship. Its unique approach allows students to pursue their education for a five-year period without the pressure of university entrance exams. “We firmly believe that by increasing the number of individuals in Japan who possess the ability to create and possess an entrepreneurial mindset, we can shape the future of our country,” says the College’s spokesperson. “Furthermore, we recognize the significance of progress, even if we ourselves and our organization are still a work in progress.”

Click Here to View the Good Design Best 100 winners for the year 2023

The post Good Design Award 2023 Crowns its ‘Grand Award Winner’ – Here are the Top 5 Finalists first appeared on Yanko Design.

A sleek Japanese electric grill that is a modular and space-efficient solution the traditional bulky appliance

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The Magic Grill from Haruo Matsunaga is a modular, portable, and electric grill that comes with a removable base and a 3mm hot plate to optimize the product’s storage, assembly, and function.

Whether we’re camping or making the most out of small living spaces, portable grills solve a lot of our cooking dilemmas. When camping, having access to a portable grill is always preferable to starting a fire from scratch. In tiny living spaces, kitchenettes might be space-efficient, but weak stovetops can sometimes make cooking more frustrating than it has to be. The Magic Grill, an electric grill designed by Haruo Matsunaga strikes the ideal balance between space efficiency and functionality.

The Magic Grill, as ideated by Matsunaga measures an overall plate thickness of only 3mm using the brand’s proprietary ultra-thin AC film heater. Recognized by Good Design Awards for 2021’s cooking appliances category, the Magic Grill aims to solve storage issues that comes with traditional, bulky electric grills.

Constructed with a removable base, the Magic Grill can easily slide into any cramped cabinet or compact backpack thanks to its modular design. The Magic Grill’s film-shaped, full-face electric hot plate ensures that each dish is cooked evenly. Similar to Teppanyaki cuisine, The Magic Grill utilizes an iron griddle-like hot plate to cook food, ensuring an even cook-through and temperatures.

Leaning on a revolutionary, ultra-thin heater to cook various dishes, the Magic Grill’s innovation stems from the hot plate’s integrated proprietary technology. With a removable base, the Magic Grill can easily be stored anywhere and assembled quickly in the kitchen or on the go, requiring only an outlet for the electric cord to plug into for operation.

Designer: Haruo Matsunaga

Click Here to Buy Now!

The post A sleek Japanese electric grill that is a modular and space-efficient solution the traditional bulky appliance first appeared on Yanko Design.

This flipping cat bowl avoids food spillage wet + dry meals, and prevents whisker fatigue!

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The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this design was a cat standing in front of the bowl, it takes a long pause and says, “Welcome to my TailTalk!” – now you can’t unsee it so let’s ‘talk’ about it. TailTalk is a multifunctional pet bowl that happens to have won the Red Dot Award 2020 as well as the Good Design Award 2019, so it certainly solves a problem most pet owners face – food spillage.

The innovative bowl takes into account that the pets eat both dry + wet foods for their respective benefits, and this product serves the purpose of holding both instead of having two bowls. The design is intuitive for pets and their owners, both sides of the liner can be used by simply flipping it over. The shallow side holds the wet food and the deeper side is for dry food, this way it prevents odor and minimizes bacterial growth. Shallow depth is chosen for wet food because it contains the moisture and makes it easy to lap up the wet bits while the deeper bowl is chosen for dry food to avoid spilling of crumbs. Clean eating isn’t just limited to ingredients, to keep the space clean while pets enjoy their meal TailTalk has a gap between the inner and outer shell which works as an anti-overflow tank. I call this gap the food moat!

Another benefit of the cleverly crafted bowl is that it avoids whisker fatigue. Your cat’s whiskers are extremely sensitive and can become easily fatigued by unnecessary contact with things like the sides of bowls. So to prevent whisker fatigue, you should make sure your cat’s food bowls are low and shallow and her water dish is wide – exactly like TailTalk which also has a gap that further minimizes contact with the sides. The simple design is effective in avoiding food waste and keeping the space hygienic which is healthy for your pets too. It saves you cleaning effort and now there are very slim chances of your pet eating food scattered on the floor that could disrupt their digestion and lead to more cleaning for you.

Designer: Neo Lee for Husky Design

Click Here to Buy Now!

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Touch a button to turn these glasses into bifocals!

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Easily something out of a sci-fi novel, Mitsui Chemical’s TouchFocus spectacles have lenses made from a liquid crystal that can alter shape at will, going from one pre-determined form to another. How does TouchFocus use this incredibly innovative technology? To allow regular spectacles to instantly, at will, turn into bifocals.

The extremely advanced technology allows you to, with a single touch on a button/logo located at the temple, turn on or off the bifocals feature. When switched on, the lenses alter in shape in a matter of seconds, turning regular powered glasses into dual-powered glasses, or bi-focals, allowing you to account for far as well as near-sightedness. Press the button again and the secondary lenses disappear, giving you your primary-powered lenses again.

This technology is especially remarkable simply because of how incredibly accurate the crystal’s shape memory is required to be. Any distortion would result in spectacles that aren’t any good because the lenses are warped, but the TouchFocus manages to carry out the transformation (over and over again) with sheer accuracy. This is especially helpful for people with near and farsightedness. The bifocals replaced the need to switch between regular and reading glasses, but they too have a caveat. Simple tasks like tying your shoelaces or walking down the stairs become challenging because the lenses meant for reading can’t focus on objects that are further than a couple of inches away. TouchFocus lets you toggle between these modes, allowing you to switch on the reading glasses mode only when necessary.

This marvelous technology is housed in a design that’s worth appreciating. Designed appropriately for its target audience, the elderly, the TouchFocus are stylish but not necessarily techy. They look like any other pair of premium eyewear, concealing the technology well, to make the glasses look just like any other pair of glasses. Moreover, the glasses also retain a sleek design and don’t necessarily look bulky, even though they house within them some pretty groundbreaking tech!

The TouchFocus is a winner of the Good Design Award for the year 2018.

Designer: Mitsui Chemical

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The rising tide of smallphones and dumbphones

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Over the past few weeks, you’ll have seen quite a few smartphones that went against the cultural norm of innovation and progress. The Punkt MP02 stripped the phone of its addictive camera, screen, and internet connectivity, forcing people to communicate using voice, rather than send each other notifications and messages on apps. The Palm Phone shrunk your feature phone to a size that seemed handy, going against the wave of massive phablet-sized phones with 97% of the front just dominated by pixels.

Kyocera’s KY-O1L is a bit of both (although the name could be a little catchier). A recipient of the Japanese Good Design Award, and also touted as the world’s thinnest phone, the KY-O1L is literally the size of a credit card, and just a couple of millimeters thinner. Designed for the white-collar workers who still rely on business cards, the KY-O1L fits right into cardholders, allowing you to have a phone along with your cards that you can A. carry around with you, and B. Use to instantly make calls, save contacts, and access the web for work-related reasons.

The phone comes with a monochrome e-ink touchscreen, and a 380mAh battery that’s more than enough to power the phone. Built with LTE, the phone can be used to browse the internet too, and although there isn’t an app store (or Android compatibility), the phone does come with a web browser that’s more than sufficient to access information on the web. Running a browser in black and white can be a slightly unnerving experience at first, but it’s definitely rewarding in the sense that it allows you to be purely utilitarian with your phone. A perfect phone for the kind of person who believes in hustling, keeping technology in check while being able to communicate with the world, and most importantly, safeguarding their privacy with technology that doesn’t use apps or cameras to spy incessantly on them. It doesn’t sound that bad when you say it that way, does it?

Designer: Kyocera

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Good Design Award 2016 is here and YOU HAVE to participate NOW!

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My Good Design Award 2015 book finally arrived and has brought back a flood of memories from the past year! In retrospect, I think I have had the most valuable experience in Mid Town Tokyo, than in any lifetime as an editor for Yanko Design. It was my second trip and kinda knew what to expect; yet my Japanese hosts managed to surprised me with the events and winning talents showcased. First things first, the new round is upon us – if you are a designer, design studio, manufacturer or just about anyone who fits this list of categories … the entries are open NOW and through June 1st, 2016. Get going and apply right away.

Now back to memory lane and a list of details on how you too can benefit from a Good Design Award under your belt. The good people at Japan Institute of Design Promotion (JIDP) helped me discover a world of possibilities and the in-depth thought process that goes behind the mechanics of the awards. Not many of you may be aware of this, but almost 85% of the Japanese population relate to the Good Design Awards, and during the exhibition week, almost all stores (example: MUJI) and Malls, go the extra mile, to showcase the award-winning products and services.

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What this means is that the general population is highly aware of the value of Good Design, right from their formative years. Although, the history of this award saw it being more catered towards industrial and manufactured products; over the years there has been a shift towards consumer goods and services, public wellness programs and habitats.

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Amongst the many winners, I had a close encounter with two companies: Tanagram Factory Inc. (South Korea) and Balmuda Inc. The former is the maker of the Smart Rope – an LED embedded jump rope (Featured On YD Here) and Steam Toaster. In other parts of the world, we have Electrolux pioneering the steam oven, but this toaster is a testimony on how to make a perfectly crisp buttery toast!

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The grand jury prize for 2015 went to designer Satoshi Sugie – WHILL Co., Ltd. for the WHILL Model A, a personal mobility vehicle. Likewise, in the past 59 years, around 43,000 designs have been recognized by the awards!

To quote them, “The Good Design Award is not a competition to determine the superiority or inferiority of a design. Instead, it assesses designs from the perspective of whether or not it enriches life or society – in other words, the effect and use of that design.”

If you are awarded a Good Design Award, you can harp that your entry is an example of society-leading good design.

What’s in it for you!

Good Design Award winners are awarded with an Award Certificate for each winning entry. Recipients of the Good Design Best 100 and Special Awards will also be presented with a trophy. The Award recipients are featured in the online gallery along with a summary of comments from the jury outlining what points of each design were highly evaluated. Winners are invited to participate in an exhibition of the year’s winning designs, the G Exhibition. This event is attended by the design industry influencers, as well as distributors, members of the press, students, international guests and inspectors, and the public. The awards ceremony hosted at the G Exhibition, as well as to an informal gathering with members of the jury afterwards, is quite a highlight. The use of the G Mark, as proof of the award along with a feature in the Good Design Award annual, add to the list of benefits.

For a detailed overview, read here.

Reminder: the entries are open NOW and through June 1st, 2016. Apply Now!
Reminder Again: Part Two with details jury interview and winners’ interview, coming up soon!

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The “Good” in Good Design Award

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The short of it is that The Good Design Award registrations are open and the deadline for entries is June 3, 2015 – So hurry and Apply Now! In case you need convincing … read the long of it … my trip to Japan and first hand experience of the Awards, the Jury and the Exhibition at Tokyo Midtown. The journey of the awards kicked off as a benchmark for the industrialized Japan, however, over the last decade or so, the focus has shifted to include consumer goods and everyday items. This opens doors for young companies and designers from the world over to participate.

Dates to remember:

  • June 3 – Deadline of the entry
  • September 29 – Announcement of the award recipients
  • October 30 – Announcement of the Special Award winners
  • October 30 to November 4 – Good Design Exhibition in Tokyo
  • November 4 – Grand Award selection and Award Ceremony

The Good Design Award is hosted by the Japan Institute for Design Promotion and roughly 1200 designs are recognized every year. “BEST 100” items and 9 Grand Award were presented last year and the winner – Denso Wave’s robot, “VS050 SII” was spectacularly displayed in an enclosed box, doing its swag and how!

YD was a part of a special tour that got a chance to take in the sights and sounds of the exhibition. Besides feasting my eyes on the amazingly designed products, I got a chance to ask a few questions to the Chairman of the Jury, Naoto Fukasawa along with Fumie Shibata and Gen Suzuki.

When asked what was more important … design or technology, Naoto Fukasawa said that earlier it was all about design, but now we have transitioned to a phase where technology is more important. “The change has happened naturally. The aim of design is to expose the technology.”

The way Good Design Award works is this, they have a theme each year and for 2014 it was ‘Kokochi’ or ‘Quality of Comfort’, and while screening the submissions, this aspect is most applied in the final leg and is critical for you to get into the “Top 100” bracket. Aligned with this mindset, Fukasawa said that successful Kokochi simply means, “The design builds a harmonious interaction between the users and technology.” The Good Design Best 100 Special Exhibition conveys this message effectively and is visited by both Japanese and International Design enthusiasts from across the globe.

For 2015, Good Design Award has introduced “Topical Issue” as a new system in order to enhance their role. If you are participating, then please get a better understanding of this here.

Topical Issue refers to “an area where design is considered to be especially required in a coming society”. In the screening, a special team (Topical Issue Directors) to deepen discussion on these issues is organized, and observes subject entries across screening units and discusses the “possibilities in the future society” and the “roles and meaning of design”.

Moving on, it was a visual treat to see how involved Japan is in the Awards, for example I walked into the Muji Store and they had a whole counter dedicated to their award-winning products from over the decades. Almost every retail store was showcasing the G-Mark products in a special nook and according to Gen Suzuki; about 90% of the Japanese people are aware of the Good Design Award and respect its value when it comes to making buying decisions.

The Great East Japan Earthquake has left a mark in the world of design, and while Gen remarked how some of his designer friends have actually gone back to agricultural roots, the other end of the spectrum saw us walk through a special curation of Japanese Furniture Selection that hoped to “convey values through designs that have a fundamental purpose through meaning beyond direction.” Many of the designs showcased traditional craftsmanship such as Japanese woodworking as well as new technologies.

Catch them young and watch them grow – this adage is true in Japan, where the Award exhibition engaged children aged between 7 and 12, in activities that married design and technology. I got a peek at a workshop where children were asked to draw a picture over an area of a map and then they had to walk the area on the map with GPS attached to them. The idea was to see how many of them would manage to walk as close to the initial picture drawn on the map. Pretty clever!

It was a treat to visit Jury Member Fumie Shibata’s Studio, where she showed me her creations and gifted me her signature Japanese knife. I asked her what changes in the judging process has she seen over the last decade as a jury member?

Shibata: “The selection process or screening process has not changed; the environment and the focus of choosing winners is different each year, so our perspective is to match the brief of the theme for the year and judge the entry based on that. I have been a jury for the last decade and we are no longer looking at the submitted entries as stand-alone objects. We factor in the entire context and impact of the object for its intended environment. Our entire outlook is based on the whole and not the singular.”

Shibata on trends: “As for the trends in design, earlier big manufacturing companies would submit their products and these dictated the tone of the entries. Over the last five years, smaller retailers and design companies are participating and their projects have added a new dimension to the trends in design, which is more refreshing and radical. Each year there is a theme for the competition and that dictates the entry selection only at the last stage of judging. The pre-screening takes into account the overall quality and then may lead to a G-Mark Award, but for it to make the cut for special categories or the Top 100, and then the design should conform to the theme of the year.”

Shibata on advice to young designer: “Designers need to network both vertical and horizontal – meet not only mentors but also their contemporaries. When designers are creating, they should focus on staying true to their origins and at the same time blend in an international approach towards their design. This holds true to both Japanese and International Designers.”

Wrapping up my visit, I spoke with Gen Suzuki and asked him elaborate more on modern Japanese Design, “The main characteristic of Japanese Design is craftsmanship, and blending that with modern mindset is what the modern Japanese product design is. The downside of craftsmanship is that the focus is too much on the process and the product that the bigger picture is sometimes lost.” Well Said!

To sum it up, seeing is believing … and the 2014 Exhibition was Top Notch! I have come back with a profound understanding of why people praise Japanese Design so much. It’s all about the character and the mindset; using basic skills like craftsmanship and marring it with the modern implements. I can lay a bet that 2015 will be a step better, because you’re inspired by the exhibition and will be participating and winning … and I will see you in Japan in November!

Deadline: June 3, 2015

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(The “Good” in Good Design Award was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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