News Roundup

IDEA: Asian Industrial Designers Excel

The 2006 Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) saw design teams from Asia scoop over a quarter of this year’s 27 Gold Awards. The IDEA awards, which are among the most sought after awards for product-design by large and small companies across the world, focused on five areas – design innovation, benefit to the user, benefit to the client/business, ecological responsibility, and appropriate aesthetics and appeal. The judges made their selection from the 499 designs submitted to this year’s competition.

Among the gold winners, announced in July, were:

* Samsung’s Touch Messenger mobile phone, which enables blind or visually-impaired users to send and receive Braille text messages. Samsung hopes that, once commercialized, their phone will improve the quality of life for visually impaired people – who number some 180 million worldwide. Samsung also walked away with two Silver awards. The company has won 19 IDEA awards over the last five years and ranks first in the number of IDEA awards ever won.

* the Seymourpowell design for the ENV (Emission Neutral Vehicle) bike by Intelligent Energy. The ENV bike has been engineered and purpose-built from the ground up, and demonstrates the applicability of hydrogen fuel cell technology for everyday use. The Core, which is completely detachable from the bike, is a compact and efficient fuel cell, which Intelligent Energy say is capable of powering anything from a motorboat to a small household.

* Lenovo’s Opti Desktop PC and Visioneering. China’s largest computer manufacturer, which recently acquired IBM’s PC unit, took on ZIBA Designs to define its next-generation desktop PC, notebook and cell phone, and to reinvent the company image.

G8 Commit to Combat Counterfeiting

At their summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, in July, the Group of Eight (G8) nations reaffirmed their commitment "to strengthening individual and collective efforts to combat piracy and counterfeiting," noting that "such efforts will contribute to sustainable development of the world economy." The group issued a six-point statement outlining the priorities and concrete measures which will form the basis of the G8’s work plan on piracy and counterfeiting.

The statement calls for enhanced cooperation with and among the competent...