Product Category/ Family Use Group

01A20620, 01A20621
Answering telephone / muTECH telephone 610, 810
Applicant: TAE KWANG INDUSTRIAL CO.,LTD. + IWASAKI DESIGN STUDIO
Designer: ICHIRO IWASAKI

This is a family of products produced cooperatively by a designer. Elegant color design and simple, honest forms are combined to produce household appliances, an area in which companies often lose sight of the potential for creating a product with an attractive form. In this product development project, relations between the designer and the company were ideal, and the role and power of the designer were intelligently put to use during the entire process of producing the products. This made the role of the designer much better known throughout society. The Adjudication Committee was especially impressed with the way in which the attractive formal expression of these new products made one want to use them and take pride in ownership, and with the type of design management that had helped build up a new brand.



New Frontier Category

01D11271
Advanced Hydraulic Excavator
Applicant: Komatsu Ltd.
Designer: Hirano & Associates, Inc.

This is an example of design management by a construction equipment manufacturer and a design firm that focused on developing an oil-pressure power shovel as a concept machine. With the environment, information technology, and safety as their principal concerns, they proposed to figure out what construction techniques and machinery will look like in the near future. Under the management of the design studio, the company has been able to make maximum use of its own carefully cultivated cutting edge technology and has been promoting its ideas of the future of construction to the general public. We were most impressed by the total design management efforts of both participants in this project.