Tag Archives: A’ Design 2019

The quirky calendar designs of 20 A’ Design Gold Award-winning Katsumi Tamura

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Lauded as the most awarded designer on the A’ Design Award roster, and even sitting on top of the World Designer Ranking with 13 Platinum Awards, 20 Golden Awards and as many as 44 awarded designs bringing his total to 218 points, Katsumi Tamura is a multiple award-winning Professional Designer from Tokyo / Japan specialized in Graphic Design. Tamura’s design awards go to his quirky calendars that don’t just sit on your desk, they adorn it. With a playful demeanor and an eye-catching appeal, Tamura’s calendars are functional works of art. Styled as everything from furniture to animals, to even buildings, Tamura’s calendars are designed to be interactive. They don’t just sit on your table for an entire year before being replaced with a new calendar. They add beauty and fun to your workspace, they encourage you to engage with them, examine them from all angles, and even show them off to other people.

With 44 A’ Design Awards among many other prestigious awards (including Red Dot, iF, and IDA Awards) under their belt, Tamura’s body of work really speaks for itself. His explorations with paper and the ability to turn something as mundane as a calendar into an objet d’art is remarkable. Tamura’s company good morning inc. has seen its fair share of exposure, courtesy these multiple awards. Scroll down as we dip into Tamura’s take on how to reimagine looking at dates on a piece of paper. Whether it’s Tamura’s laser-like focus in his domain, or Dr. Hakan Gursu‘s ability to span different design categories, A’ Design Awards provides a brilliant amount of diversity, catching projects from all walks of life, across countries, cultures, and design backgrounds. You can read more publications on the A’ Design Award by clicking here.

Click Here to submit your entries for the A’ Design Awards 2019-20 program! Last day to submit your work is the 28th of February!

Designer: Katsumi Tamura


The 2018 Tri-Leg Calendar by Tamura involves interlocking triangles that form a tripod-esque design that can either stack into one another, sit independently, or be propped vertically like a tall tower. The choice is yours!


The 2013 Town Calendar looks at architecture for inspiration, turning your days into a literal diorama.


The 2013 Rocking Chair calendar is one of my favorites! It uses the month-cards in a unique way where the passive cards sit where your cushion would be, while the active card rests against the structure to form the backrest, and face you as you look at it. You could try giving the rocking chair a push too!


The 2018 Puzzle Calendar uses various cuts in circular, triangular, and square-shaped cards to create a game where you can go wild by creating your own structural calendar. Just like each month is different, and your year is different from someone else’s, your calendar is unique too!


The 2012 Zoo Calendar takes your favorite animals from the zoo and transforms them into months on a calendar, turning your desktop into an urban attraction! We won’t judge you if you play with them while no one’s looking. We promise.


The 2013 Module Calendar is both fun and self-explanatory. It provides a framework for building your own vertical towers, much like LEGO. Create blocks or skyscrapers… the choice is yours.


The 2015 Arc Calendar was created for the YUPO corporation using their environmentally friendly synthetic YUPO paper, which is known for its remarkable color-representation properties. The calendar is printed on a single sheet and folded (no glue required) to form an arc-shaped design that introduces depth to create a foreground, middle-ground, and a background, making each month look like a 3D landscape.


The 2013 Farm Calendar builds on the success and the cute-appeal of the 2012 Zoo Calendar. It takes inspiration from various farm animals, realizing them into standing 3D prototypes with the month information etched on each animal’s torso. Don’t miss the adorable barn that comes with the set!


The 2018 Swing Calendar is perhaps the most inventive of the set, featuring an actual swing made out of paper. It relies on the same format as the 2013 Rocking Chair Calendar, but explores a type of furniture that is truly more eye-catching. And yes, you can interact with and push this one too!


The 2018 Windmill Calendar requires a bit of periodic assembly, with four fan blades that have the months printed on each of them. Rotate the windmill’s fan to make sure the active month’s blade is upright and easy to read. Give the fan a 90° rotation every month, and at the end of 4 months, just replace the fan element with another one that has the next set of months printed on it. It would make for a great desktop showpiece, wouldn’t it??

Click Here to submit your entries for the A’ Design Awards 2019-20 program! Last day to submit your work is the 28th of February!

The product around your product: Winning Packaging Designs from A’ Design Award 2019

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Your product’s packaging is arguably the first thing the consumer sees, as a part of the product experience. It forms the first ever interaction between product and consumer, and a successful interaction means a consumer will pick the product up off the aisle and add it to their cart. Bad packaging design can adversely affect a product’s success or its performance, while a well packaged product allows it to stand out, prompting someone to pick it up and decide to purchase it. Packaging Design is more than just a box with artwork… it’s the product around the product, and deserves as much attention while designing as the item within it.

Packaging Design forms just one of the various categories of the A’ Design Award and Competition, which spans the popular categories like Architecture, Lighting, and Consumer Electronics, as well as the obscure, lesser known categories like Cybernetics, Prosumer Products, and Safety Apparel Design. The A’ Design Award’s ultimate goal is to be an umbrella that covers good design across all disciplines, which is why it has 100 different categories for submitting design projects, and over 200 jury members (comprising academics, design professionals and press members) from all around the world collectively judging the works. Winners of the A’ Design Award don’t just win a trophy and a certificate, but receive an entire PR Campaign dedicated towards pushing their career, clout, and even their projects to newer heights. A’ Design Award’s winners and even its participants are included in its annual award book and business network, while additionally contributing to their country’s overall design ranking that paints a holistic picture of how design-centric and design-forward each country is.

The A’ Design Award is currently accepting entries for the 2020 edition of the award program, so go ahead and give your work and career the push it deserves!

Here are some of our curated picks of Packaging Design winners from the A’ Design Award & Competition 2019. If you have a potential packaging design project that you think is worthy of an award, click here to register & participate in the A’ Design Awards 2020. Hurry! The regular deadline ends on 30th September!

01. Awanama Sake by Ryuta Ishikawa

With the kind of sheer finesse you’d expect from a handle on a samurai sword, the Awanama Sake bottle is just a canvas for its beautiful texture. Designed to stand out from the category of sake, Awanama wants to introduce its unpasteurized sake as a new brand of rice-wine that’s authentic and deserves universal recognition. The bottle comes with a heavily textured black exterior that catches the eye, while also remaining opaque so as to shield the sake inside from external light. Made from glass, Awanama’s bottle surely knows how to attract with just how intricately detailed the texture on it is, practically hypnotizing one into wanting to pick it up!

02. Eco Freshness Tag by Zeyuan Zhang


Designed so you never end up having stale poultry, the Eco Freshness Tag lets you know when your eggs have gone bad. Yes, you could submerge your egg in water to see if it sinks or floats (if it floats, throw it away), but then again, you could also just look at the color of the tag, which alters over a period of 10-14 days. A green tag indicates the egg is fresh and ready for consumption, a yellow tag probably means you should consume the egg right away instead of waiting, and when the tag turns red, just ditch them eggs!

03. Raimaijon Pasteurized Sugarcane Juice by Prompt Design and Cordesign

The ingenuity of the Raimaijon sugarcane juice bottle is that when stacked, it literally looks like a sugarcane stalk! The slightly warped cylindrical bottles nest one on top of another, while the label gives it its green color. When you stack 2 or more, the bottles begin looking like sugarcane stalks, complete with nodes between them! What a wonderful way to use the bottle to trace back the product’s origin story! This would make for a pretty eye-catching installation on a storefront, would it not?

04. New Hope Seed Brand Gift Box by Yung-Li Chen – Fineherbsoap Co. Ltd.


When you buy one of Fine Herb’s soaps, you’re doing much more than just buying soap. You’re buying a plant too! The organic natural soaps come in white vessels with a small seed taped to the bottom. Take the soap out and water the seed and it eventually grows into a herb. You can then put some soil into the vessel, turning packaging into a planter for your Zinnia seedling! And don’t worry, the planter is made from mixed pulp of 100% recycle paper and lavender grass seeds, making it eco-friendly and biodegradable too!

05. Cedea Luxury Mineral Water Bottle by Nick Pitscheider and Sharon Hassan

Designed as an homage to Cedea, the goddess of water and life in the Dolomites’ Ladin Culture, the bottle pays homage to the Northern Italian culture and its lore, with two water bottles, one representing the ruby red of roses, and one capturing the stunning blue of the sky. What’s genuinely remarkable is the bottle’s construction, that’s designed to perfectly refract light in a clever way. The bottle’s bases are colored either red or blue, while the rest of the bottle is completely transparent. Look at the bottles head-on, and you see clear water in them, but look at the bottles when they’re below your line of sight, and the glass’s refractive property makes the entire bottle look either blue or yellow. Its lens-like effect aside, the bottle looks absolutely beautiful too, with its gently swirling form highlighted by the twisting vertical lines that give the bottle a delicate spiral asymmetric shape, resembling the natural shape of Cedea, the Goddess of Water and Life.

06. Dinosaur Ice Cream Box by Mengying Zhang & Zhicheng Chen


A fun way to make kids enjoy the experience of eating ice-cream (enjoy it even more, rather), the Dinosaur Ice Cream Box comes with an embossed dinosaur fossil shape at its base. Fill the tub with chocolate ice cream that represents the soil, and your kids turn into archaeologists who have to dig through the ground with their ice-cream spoons to hit the fossilized treasure at the bottom! When you reach the end of the box, the remnants of ice-cream look like stray pieces of soil near the dinosaur’s carefully preserved fossil. Now if only there was a way to use this box to get kids to eat more of their veggies!

07. Small Bag Candle Packaging by Liangfang Fang and Jinxi Chen


Just an elegant way of packaging a candle, Liangfang Fang and Jinxi Chen’s solution involves a small, flat piece of paper that’s pinched and folded, with a neat tape on top. What’s really worth appreciating is its simplicity and its minimal elegance… and the fact that it literally looks like packaging for a chocolate, because those candles look absolutely edible, don’t they?!

08. Ooops! Use Toilet Paper by 2Republic BTL Reklámügynökség Kft.

While the designer’s name may certainly be a handful, the Ooops! toilet paper is intentionally designed to be a handful too! Unlike most toilet papers that come packed in sets of multiple rolls, and require to be unpacked and mounted on a toilet-paper-holder, the Ooops! toilet paper comes in a pack of 3, and can literally be used inside the box! The packaging comes with a handle, allowing you to easily carry it around, within the shopping mall, and also inside your house, from the store room to the loo, where you can just place the package right beside your toilet. The package comes with an opening on the top, which you can use to pull out as much toilet-paper as you need. Designed to be used without a toilet-roll-holder, the packaging dispenses the paper directly from itself. The rolls inside the box are center-fed, which means there’s no cardboard tube at the center of the roll… it’s paper right from start to finish. That doesn’t just give you more toilet paper per roll, it also means you can pull the paper out like you would from a tissue-box. Easy peasy!
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Impressed? Inspired? Go ahead and grab a spot for your own designs at the A’ Design Award and Competition 2020! Click here to Register Now! Hurry! The regular deadline ends on 30th September!

Colani would have loved this vertebrae-inspired chair

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The Beel Chair’s unique biodynamic aesthetic literally takes inspiration from the part of your body that rests against it… the spine! Mimicking the shape of two vertebral bones, connected together by a spinal column, the Beel chair offers comfortable sitting and healthy posture, while being flexible, thanks to the backrest’s design.

Designed by Selami Gündüzeri, the Beel is reminiscent of the design aesthetic championed by German design stalwart Luigi Colani, who passed away at 91 today. Always one to shun the use of straight lines because everything about our world is dominated by curves, right from its shape to its orbit, to every creature within it, Colani was a strong proponent of embracing nature’s curves and of practicing organic design not just for visual fulfillment, but for ultimate ergonomic comfort too. Selami’s Beel chair is perhaps a perfect example of that philosophy.

The Beel Chair is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2019.

Designer: Selami Gündüzeri

The red rock and glass construction of this African Museum feels almost Martian!

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A combination of modern and traditional, of indigenous and industrial, the restoration of the Old Palapye Museum truly feels otherworldly. Set in the heritage site of Palapye in Botswana, the building’s setting is highly reminiscent of a Martian landscape, surrounded by red soil and rocks. Amidst this lie the ruins of a burnt brick church built in 1891, standing proudly within perimeters of a rich historic site of the 19th century capital of the Bangwato tribe. Still holding immense cultural relevance, the building’s restoration (and subsequent conversion into a museum) aims at bringing attention back to the rich traditions and the ways of the Bangwato people.

Beullah Serema’s design builds on the ruins of the Palapye church, supporting it, rather than replacing it. The stunning contrast between the burnt brick and the glass highlights the contrast between the old and the new, while giving equal emphasis to both. Plus, the combination of materials and styles almost makes me wonder if colonies on the red planet will echo a similar architectural aesthetic!

The Old Palapye Museum is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2019.

Designer: Beullah Serema

Ten of the most unconventional award-winning Architecture Designs from A’ Design Award 2019

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In keeping with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s description of architecture as frozen music, this post is quite literally a playlist of the best architectural designs from 2019.

One of the A’ Design Awards’ most strong categories, Architecture sees a lot of entrants as well as winners from around the globe. We handpicked some of the most beautiful, most intriguing, most inspirational, and definitely the most unique architectural pieces from the A’ Design Award and Competition’s winners list of 2019. Ranging from conceptual designs to residential units, to religious spaces, offices, museums, and retail spaces, the A’ Design Award covers architecture in its entirety, aside from a wide roster of other design categories. Not only does winning an A’ Design Award look great on an architect’s resume, it also brings a lot of repute and focus to the work, uplifting the value of both the designer and the design!

The A’ Design Award is currently accepting entries for the 2020 edition of the award program, so go ahead and give your work and career the push it deserves!

If you’re an architect looking to participate in the A’ Design Awards 2020, click here to register. Hurry! The regular deadline ends on 30th September!

01. Arbor Arena Parametric Pavilion by Selvagen
Taking inspiration from low-poly structures, the Arbor Arena Pavilion is a neat exploration in parametric architecture that uses a series of triangles to create a geodesic dome shape, complete with windows and even a star-shaped skylight on the top. Designed for a temporary event in 2018, the modular structure is now being rebuilt as a permanent addition to the Botanical Garden in Recife, Brazil.

02. Cohen Chapel by Joaquim Portela
Featured on Yanko Design back in 2016 as the Aurelios Chapel, Joaquim Portela’s chapel design explores something absolutely unique in terms of architecture, leave alone religion-inspired architecture. A chimney-esque detail acts as an abstract steeple on the outside, but in fact works as a skylight, diverting a strong shaft of light into the chapel to beautifully illuminate the altar.

03. Cecilip Facade by Dante Luna G.
Designed as a facade for a plastic surgery clinic, the organic shape of this facade takes inspiration from the undulating curves of human skin. Its reflective nature is designed to be instantly recognizable but also attractive, in a way being a metaphor for what the clinic hopes to achieve for the patients that visit. The facade was made locally and is composed of more than three thousand profiles of stainless steel with mirror finish, each with two pieces cut CNC and armed with 3M structural tape, similar to those used in aviation, on a metal support structure.

04. Volcano Eyes Observation Platform by Jaskó+Vági Építész Kft.
Created using a basic metal framework, and filled with the rocks found in and around the area, this elevated observation platform was made in May 2018 for the Nemrut Volcano Eyes Competition, to help view a 360 degree panoramic view to the Nemrut Volcano’s caldera or crater. An upper part of the structure acts as a platform for viewing the volcano, while the lower half transforms as a shelter for the people who decide to camp or spend the night at the location.

05. Liberty Stadium by Aysan Moosvai and Farzad Saeidi
Designed to be equal parts alluring (from both the top as well as bottom, and from inside and out) as well as lightweight, the Liberty Stadium uses a combination of support structures and tensegrity to create its design. Designed around the popularity and pull of football, the structure relies on being able to create spaces for crowds to navigate easily, preventing bottlenecks and enabling circulation of the public. The project started in October 2018 and finished in January 2019 in Tehran.

06. Old Palapye Museum by Beullah Serema
For the record, this is what I imagine buildings in modern Martian societies will look like. A combination of beautiful indigenous materials like the red rock along with futuristic styles and facades made of glass. The outstanding burnt brick church ruins stand proudly within perimeters of a rich historic site of the 19th century capital of the Bangwato tribe. Built in 1891 by the London Missionary Society, it was later abandoned after the royal King Khama III relocated his capital to another resource-rich site. Designed as a museum to showcase and preserve the past cultures and artifacts, the architect designed a museum and exhibition space by working with the existing ruins, so as to not override them but rather create a new life around them!

07. Wuxi Wanda Mall by WANDACTI and CCI Architecture Design & Consulting Co.,Ltd.
Unusual for combining a rectangular footprint with its flower-esque inspiration, the Wuxi Wanda Mall has a rather unique aesthetic. The design inspiration of the project is derived from the Wuxi city flower “azalea”, and is designed to cover five different theme parks with five azalea petals respectively. The project is located in the main axis of Wuxi cultural tourism city, accommodating for shopping, catering, culture, entertainment and leisure.

08. Casa Ojala House by Beatrice Bonzanigo
The term used to describe Casa Ojala is that it’s a ‘highly flexible house’, which immediately makes it quite an interesting concept in the first place. A sustainable, minimal, compact and flexible product for a new comfort, away from TV or air conditioning, the Casa Ojala blurs the lines between what’s indoors and what’s outdoors. The flexible house has two bedrooms, one with a double bed and one with a single bed, a bathroom, a terrace, a kitchenette and a living room, which can, in fact, be continuously transformed into one another or become a large outdoor platform, a house with no roof or even no floor. “The home becomes a surprise, a game, a theatre, fragrances and gestures. The landscape is its facade”, says Beatrice Bonzanigo. The project was patented in December 2017 in Milan, and was exhibited in Salone del Mobile in April 2019 in Milan.

09. M50 Art Hotel by Yun LU – MUDA-Architects
Built in the musical town of Pingle in Sichuan, the M50 hotel actually abstracts a musical piece and turns it into architecture, pretty much canonizing Goethe’s quote of architecture being like frozen music. The external curved facade mimics the rhythmic movement of music and the bodily sway associated with it while the external curtain wall employs a horizontally subdivided aluminum plate, which closely resembles the texture of bamboo, as a hat tip to Sichuan’s bamboo culture.

10. Sailing Castle Pavilion by Cheng Tsung Feng
Bringing the ship’s sails to land as a strong expression-piece, the Sailing Castle Pavilion is a quaint open space that reacts with its surroundings by billowing with the wind, while remaining static on land. Tapping into the feeling of seeing a fleet of boats and fishermen sailing out to see, or making their journey back to land, the pavilion hopes to create that feeling of awe, at looking at a vast number of sails billowing in the wind together. The interaction among people and the Sailing Castle is a representation of the prosperity of the fishery industry, communal unity, expectation, and joy.

Impressed? Inspired? Go ahead and grab a spot for your own designs at the A’ Design Award and Competition 2020! Click here to Register Now! Hurry! The regular deadline ends on 30th September!

Entries are now open for the A’ Design Awards and Competition 2020!

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Promising yet again to cover the best in design across all disciplines, the A’ Design Award and Competition‘s 2020 edition is now open for entries. Every year, the awards honor and celebrate designs and designers spanning over a hundred categories, ranging from Furniture, Architecture, Industrial Design, Consumer Electronics, Medical Design, Service Design and many other design domains. Gathering a jury of over 200 senior designers and educators from around the world, A’ Design Award is perhaps one of the most recognized platforms for true validation.

The A’ Design Awards were founded to be a Yellow-Pages of sorts for good designs and designers. Applicants range from non-designers to students, professionals, teams, to even vast organizations. Judges take an agnostic approach to the entries, evaluating them for their concept, execution, aesthetics, philosophy, and potential for social change. Winners of the A’ Design Award are then entitled to not just a trophy and certificate, but also vast PR campaigns, extensive publication on design blogs, and the ability to get their designs to millions of more eyes across the globe. Even participants find themselves on the winning side, because just registering for the A’ Design Award entitles participants to a free evaluation of their design, as well as an inclusion in the Business Network, as well as access to A’ Design Award’s free Design Fee Calculator that allows designers to accurately price their products and services.

At the end of the day, the awards annually plot the best work from around the world, creating an extensive map of good design from across the globe. A’ Design Awards’ program even ranks individual designers on an international scale, as well as provides scores for each country, creating value by allowing you to capture progress and even study design trends as they happen. Be a part of the most diverse international design competition there is! Registrations for the A’ Design Awards and Competition 2020 are now open!

Click Here to Register for the A’ Design Award and Competition 2020! Deadline for registrations and submissions: 30th September 2019

A look at winners from A’ Design Award and Competition 2019

01. Flexpai Flexible Smartphone by Royole

Currently the first and only flexible smartphone to be shipped to the public (Samsung’s Fold was faulty, and Huawei had its own problems), the Flexpai is at the forefront of the bending-smartphone revolution! With an outward-bending screen that can be used in both folded and unfolded formats, the Flexpai innovates in a category that most company haven’t even properly set foot into!

02. Intermodality Desk by Attila Stromajer

Inspired by the prominent role and place of grand pianos in homes, the Intermodality desk is just as grand. With a design that follows the cues of the large instrument, the desk comes with a similar shape, size, and even features a large lid that opens sideways, like in a grand piano. Standing on three legs, like the musical instrument, the Intermodality desk is crafted from antiqued plywood, and features copper trimmings near the handles and at the base of the legs, adding a touch of finesse to the desk’s grand design.

03. Luminous Lighting + Sound System by Mohammad Hossein Namayandegi


A combination of light and sound, Luminous is a chandelier that also works as a speaker with 360° surround sound. The setup comprises a ring-shaped design with LEDs on the inside of the ring, casting an ambient glow across the room, while 20 audio drivers arranged around the outer part of the ring create a rich, immersive audio experience fitting for a grand ballroom or even a large living space.

04. Sidekick Notebook by Tan Mavitan

The Sidekick is quirky, but has logic to it. An A5 notebook looks small on your desk, but open it and it doubles in size, becoming an A4, and occupying precious real estate on your desk. The Sidekick has no such problem. Its unusual shape and diagonal spine allows it to open into an ‘L’ shaped notebook that can easily sit at the corner of your keyboard, or your mousepad, or even tablet. The notebook won’t serve well for sketching, but makes a good note-taking pad, offering both landscape and portrait writing areas. Take notes, make doodles, or probably even sketch on it if you can, the Sidekick is that one notebook you won’t buy and put away only because you’ll love keeping it on your table to occasionally take notes, and to perpetually show off.

05. Natede Air Purifier by Vincenzo Vitiello – Laboratori Fabrici

The Natede is a nifty planter/air-purifier hybrid that keeps the house green and the air clean! The core technology of Natede is phytoremediation, a NASA-developed technology that forces the air through the roots of the plant to amplify its natural purification power. Designed to work discreetly and with no need for external filters that need constant replacement, Natede conveniently purifies the air you breathe by getting the plant to absorb microorganisms, gases, and dust particles, while also adding a dash of fauna to your decor!

06. Tearista Automatic Tea Maker by Shilton Chong

The Tearista is a one-of-a-kind device that democratizes instant-tea-making the way the coffee-maker allowed households to automatically brew coffee every day. At the center of the Tearista (combination of Tea and Barista) is its kettle-and-brewer combo. The kettle or carafe holds the water in it, while a perforated brewer compartment holds the tea-leaves. A control panel at the base allows you to program the steep-time and water temperature, based on the leaves you’ve selected, and the machine does the rest. A mechanical arm descends the brewer into the kettle, immediately kickstarting the tea-brewing process. When the timer comes to an end, the brewer compartment ascends upwards, ending the brewing process and leaving you with a perfectly prepared vessel full of tea!

07. Quiett Induction Cooktop by Seokhyun Park and Dosun Shin

Quiett isn’t like most induction cooktops. While induction cooking is still relatively in its prime, Quiett takes it a step further, showcasing the future of culinary preparation. The Quiett uses wonderfully sleek induction modules that snap to one and other, conveying information to each other while also giving you the ability to lay your hob out in a format that fits your countertop. The cooking surfaces are slightly recessed, making sure your vessels don’t slip off the glossy glass surface easily, and Quiett’s most futuristic feature remains its screen, built into an area right beside one of the induction plates. The screen displays recipes, allowing you to cook and follow instructions at the same time, seamlessly taking you through the cooking process, and allowing you to create new dishes without breaking a sweat! I imagine the display could play videos too, helping cooks master new techniques and skills in the kitchen and create remarkably tasty food!

08. Supporting Umbrella by Li Purui

With a shape that looks like a splash of water and a yellow color that almost gives it the appearance of a mini-crown, the Supporting Umbrella solves two rather annoying problems with the umbrella experience. A. Stability, and B. Water dripping on the floor.
The Supporting Umbrella retrofits onto most umbrella designs with the spoke at the end. It gives your umbrella a cute crown when open in the rain, and when you’re done, lets you stand the umbrella vertically on its tip. When placed vertically upside down, the Supporting Umbrella attachment uses a small concavity to collect all the water that drips off your umbrella, so that you’re not left with a pool of water on the floor every time you try to dry your umbrella out.

09. Shiny Movie Ticket by Li Peitong

The Shiny Movie Ticket is the perfect example of a simple idea that’s so revolutionary that it just absolutely warrants recognition. Designed to eliminate the need for people to constantly shine a light on their ticket stub to see which seat they’re supposed to sit in, the Shiny Movie Ticket comes with perforated numbers that tell you your row as well as seat number. It’s so remarkably simple I can’t believe no one’s ever done something like this. While movie halls need to remain dark for the projection to look bright and vivid, the Shiny Movie Ticket allows you to easily see your row and seat number by simply holding the perforated ticket to the illuminated cinema screen. Sheer simplicity, absolute genius.

10. Shell Sofa by Natalia Komarova

With a voluminous yet hollow frame, the Shell sofa is instantly visible. It is, in a strictly physical sense, minimalist (because it’s mainly hollow), but visually, the Shell sofa is almost pillowy, spacious, and a treat to look at. The sofa is a frame that curves from the left to the back and to the right, with space in between for cushions, or even two side tables if you remove the cushions at the extreme ends. It’s visually imposing, but still manages to look light and airy, thanks to its wickerwork of metal rods. The interwoven rods also create this moire effect that creates a dynamic optical illusion, making the Shell sofa’s body incredibly interesting to look at… and while we’re on the subject of interesting, the sofa comes with two small openings at the beginning and end of its structure, making it perhaps the most entertaining play area for a domestic cat. Good luck getting it out though once it goes inside!

Click Here to Register for the A’ Design Award and Competition 2020! Deadline for registrations and submissions: 30th September 2019

This crown for your umbrella collects all the water when you stand it upside-down

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With a shape that looks like a splash of water and a yellow color that almost gives it the appearance of a mini-crown, the Supporting Umbrella solves two rather annoying problems with the umbrella experience. A. Stability, and B. Water dripping on the floor.

The Supporting Umbrella retrofits onto most umbrella designs with the spoke at the end. It gives your umbrella a cute crown when open in the rain, and when you’re done, lets you stand the umbrella vertically on its tip. When placed vertically upside down, the Supporting Umbrella attachment uses a small concavity to collect all the water that drips off your umbrella, so that you’re not left with a pool of water on the floor every time you try to dry your umbrella out. Rather neat, isn’t it?

The Supporting Umbrella is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2019.

Designer: Li Purui

These four armchairs come together to form a delightful coffee table

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It’s simple, yet unique enough to look different and eye-catching. The Four Quarters are a set of four armchairs that are designed to nest within each other when placed horizontally, forming a pretty nifty wooden coffee table.

Built from solid wood and upholstered with leather to give the seat its comfortable nature, Four Quarters is a shape-shifting furniture concept that lets you have a coffee table in your house, but also surreptitiously hides four extra chairs in your home for when you have guests coming over. The chairs rest on their sides, coming together to form a coffee table, but just lift the individual chair units out and set them upright and you’ve got four extra chairs that were hiding in plain sight!

The Four Quarters is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2019.

Designer: Maria Dlugoborskaya

The Intermodality writing desk was inspired by the beauty of a grand piano

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Inspired by the prominent role and place of grand pianos in homes, the Intermodality desk is just as grand. With a design that follows the cues of the large instrument, the desk comes with a similar shape, size, and even features a large lid that opens sideways, like in a grand piano. Standing on three legs, like the musical instrument, the Intermodality desk is crafted from antiqued plywood, and features copper trimmings near the handles and at the base of the legs, adding a touch of finesse to the desk’s grand design.

The desk comes with five drawers on the front, ample writing space on top, and an additional four storage cabinets at the back, under the lid. The plywood’s 2D nature results in the desk having a chamfered, low-poly origami-esque design rather than curves like a wooden piano. This immediately gives it a sense of differentiation, making it look instantly recognizable but also unique at the same time!

The Intermodality Desk is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2019.

Designer: Attila Stromajer

Simply twist to convert this regular screwdriver into a 90° screwdriver

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Designed for portability, and to get into those tough-to-reach spots, the Right Angle Screwdriver is a neat multi-tool with interchangeable heads and the ability to maneuver itself into difficult spots thanks to its novel design that allows the screwdriver to bend 90°. The miter-joint not only lets you reach screws in recessed places, but the 90° bend even gives you the power to unscrew or screw with much more torque. The size of a pen, the Right Angle Screwdriver is an ideal piece of EDC for the tinkerer, and its multiple heads just extend the product’s versatility!

The Right Angle Screwdriver is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2019.

Designers: Qian Xiaowei & Ye Xinmin