The New Frontier Design Category is the one that usually forces not only the entrants but also those of us on the Screening Committee and the G-Mark system to challenge ourselves. We have to broaden the scope of our Adjudications to include innovative contrivances and attempts that modify the conventional concepts of design. Each time, we need to ask ourselves, "What exactly is design in this era?"

This year's entries were superb, not to be outdone by the ones from last year, the first year of the New Frontier Design Category. Of our six candidates for the Grand Prize -- Nike iD (Gold Prize winner), the Glass Recycling Network (Ecological Design Prize winner), the Soft Mechanical Suit (Universal Design Prize winner), the Future model of Hydraulic Excavator (Design Management Prize winner), and Home-staying the World (Media Design Prize winner) -- five were selected for special prizes. I believe that the winning of so many diverse prizes by entries from this Category demonstrates just how many diverse directions the areas of design have branched off in. Yet it is by no means true that the New Frontier Design Category includes "anything and everything." An overview of this year's entries reveals many innovative ideas that symbolize our times and items backed up by clearly defined business styles. In particular, many entries deal ser
iously with the current topics of the environment and recycling, and we are pleased that, rather than narrowing the field, these entries are trying to inject fresh blood into the G-Mark competition and to give us a feeling for the future.

Looking at the items adjudicated in the Category, a uniquely important keyword, one that doesn't play a role in other categories, immediately comes to mind. That word is "evolution." For example, Nike iD originally had 180 combinations of shoe patterns, but now it has 180,000 such combinations, which means that it has achieved a thousand-fold evolution, and it is still evolving. It has evolved continuously, even since the Adjudication stage in July, since the time the prizes were awarded, and even at this very second, so that it is adding more new something or other. Compared to previous design and manufacturing patterns, this is something unique and decisively new. Design that it always evolving and continuously changing. I wonder if this portends a new industrial flowering in the coming era.

Even so, the economy and the industrial sector continue to grow more and more sluggish. "Craftsmanship," one of the fundamental concepts of the G-Mark system, is weakening and growing faint. This New Frontier Design Category gives us a sense of strength, a feeling these days, hoping to win on the basis of existing skills is no strategy at all. The use of sophisticated management and systems for making use of new ideas is making a new business style take hold. We might even call this socio-cultural design.
Something that we must not forget, particularly in the virtual area, is that a firm system of management is in place in the plain honest areas that support the backbone, even if it is hard to detect from the flashy surface. In order to meet the standards of quality-conscious Japanese consumers, the previously mentioned Nike iD spares no effort to pay attention to details, checking each highly individual product that is ordered over the Internet before shipment, so that the value of the brand does not deteriorate. This integration of reality and the virtual world in itself shows that the whole attempt was designed.

If we look at the special prizes one by one, we can confirm that each one opens new frontiers of design.

The Ecological Design Prize winner, Crystal Clay's Glass Recycling Network is more than a mere recycling movement. Instead, it brings about a new style of recycling that broadens the scope of resource reuse, with discarded glass at its core. We really liked the consistent design of the process and the construction of a new recycling system. Now that the concepts of environmentalism and recycling have become givens in the field of design, we expect this kind of a step forward to bear many kinds of fruit in the society of the future.

Ritsumeikan University's Soft Mechanical Suit won the Universal Design Prize, and it literally brings about a "soft" linkage of people and technology. We can plainly see the results of Japan's recent advances in robotics technology, but the fact that people actually wear this Soft Mechanical Suit brings the sophistication of Japan's technological precision fully into play. The Suit may be used by anyone, including the elderly and disabled, and its multitude of functions make it adaptable for use as an exercise aid, in physical training, or even in virtual reality simulations. This gives us a glimpse of the new connections between robotics technology and human beings.

In addition, the Special Prize of the Chair of the Screening Committee was awarded to two entries, the Future model of Hydraulic Excavator from Komatsu, Ltd., and the Home-staying the World from Mainichi Broadcasting and TV Man Union. The former builds upon the concept model of an oil pressure shovel, and it received high marks for design management on the part of both the construction machinery manufacturer and the design studio, resulting in its being awarded the Design Management Prize. The technology fostered by the manufacturer and the management on the part of the design studio were put to the utmost use, and together, they succeeded in creating a future image for the manufacturer. On the other hand, the latter is a famous television program in which a Japanese reporter jumps into to a homestay in a foreign country and conveys what he or she experienced and felt. Many people will probably wonder why a television program should get the G-Mark. However
, behind the scenes of this evidently ordinary variety program lies a brand new concept in media design that uses the reporter's account of a different culture to motivate the audience to consider Japan's role in the world. It won a great deal of praise for this effort and was even awarded the Media Design Prize.

As we can see by looking at these winning entries, this New Frontier Design Category acknowledges the diversity of meanings to the word "design." I wonder if this Category will continue to transcend genres, take up a variety of concerns, and also broaden the meanings in which the word "design" is used in Japan. I feel that the mission of this Category is to convey the wonder of the new sensibility of designing lifestyles, human lives, and the future.
The New Frontier Design Category is no longer an experimental trial balloon. I would like this Category to be the means of showing us how the G-Mark can link the designs of the new era to the future.

Tetsuyuki Hirano
Chief Jury of New Frontier Design Category
President, Hirano & Associates, Inc.