With Covid restrictions making it impossible for many events to go ahead, Good Design Australia has taken its awards online.
Recognising and celebrating great design, the winners of Australia’s Good Design Awards across 11 design disciplines and 35 categories were announced over five days from Monday 7 to Friday 11 September.
Dr. Brandon Gien, CEO of Good Design Australia, says receiving a Good Design Award is a significant achievement given the very high calibre and record number of entries received in 2020.
“There’s no doubt it has been a really tough year for everyone so it’s nice to be able to share some good news for a change,” he says.
“The projects represented in this year’s Good Design Awards shine a positive light on our creative and innovative capacity as human beings. These inspirational winning projects give me hope and optimism that our design community will continue to innovate, no matter how challenging the world around us is.
“Australia’s Good Design Award is more than a symbol of design excellence―it represents the hard work and dedication towards an innovative outcome that will ultimately make our lives better. These projects showcase the sheer brilliance of design and the potential it has to improve our world,” he adds.
Winners include b.box for kids sport spout drink bottle, Tait Scape collection, Magis Vela Chair made from magnesium, Salt Bags, heliograf Light Soy and Made By Pen.
Made By Pen’s tabletop storage piece Linea by Jim Hannon-Tan won the Gold Award with the judges saying, “tasteful, elegant, well designed and well executed. The product establishes a base from which a range can be expanded and cleverly makes use of existing extrusions, much in the spirit of mid-century Italian design. It is a well resolved and well-made solution to a wide variety of household and office needs. It will do well for the brand.”
Light Soy, a glass lamp shaped like the iconic soy sauce ‘fish’ packet, was created by designers Angus Ware and Jeffrey Simpson as a statement on the disposable nature of the soy packets, and designed to be treasured, rather than trashed.
They were inspired to create the lamps after eating sushi and realising how much disposable plastic they had used. Like straws, coffee cups and plastic bags, billions of the little fish packets are used every year, and they can’t be reused or recycled.
Ware & Simpson both grew up by the ocean, and thought it was a cruel irony that a plastic fish would harm marine life, and even potentially contaminate our food with microplastics.
As a member of 1% For the Planet, heliograf contributes one per cent of revenue to ocean clean-ups and non-profits protecting marine life.
The Good Design Awards jury praised Light Soy, commenting: “A nice, playful product which will be a commercial success. Sense of humour about the design which is appreciated as well as thoughtful use of materials and adaptability of design. Cool social commentary and art.”
Good Design Award of the Year went to Headsafe’s NUROCHEK system, a portable device set to revolutionise the assessment of brain health.
Check out all the Good Design Awards winners here.
