Every year, around this time, we begin checking our emails with a little bit more urgency and excitement because it’s right around the end of December, beginning of January that the esteemed Chicago Athenaeum’s Museum of Architecture and Design presents its prestigious GOOD DESIGN award to those manufacturers who have shown excellence in product design across a number of categories. As a luxury brand marketing and PR agency, we work hard at DRS and Associates to make sure our clients’ products are seen in the right light by the right people at the right time. This means the right editorial, the best publications and the award designations that are the most meaningful. The GOOD DESIGN award bestows international recognition upon the world’s most prominent designers and manufacturers for advancing new, visionary, and innovative product concepts, invention and originality, and for stretching the envelope beyond what is considered ordinary product and consumer design.
The award, presented annually, has been given out for excellence in design since 1950, when it was first founded – by iconic architects Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. These pioneers recognized that good design didn’t happen in a vacuum, and their initial awards ceremony has grown exponentially since its founding. Companies such as 3M, Alessi SpA., Apple Computer, Inc., BMW, Steelcase, even Tupperware (who doesn’t count Tupperware as ‘good design’) have all won awards for their exemplary designs.
“From its modest start in 1950 at The Merchandise Mart in Chicago,” states Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine, Museum President, The Chicago Athenaeum, “GOOD DESIGN has become the world’s most prestigious barometer for the most innovative consumer and domestic products, branding, and graphic design on a global scale.”
Well over 500 GOOD DESIGN Awards were given out in 2010, and in 2011, the number was even larger. Record numbers of submission were sent by thousands of design firms and corporations. So when not one, but three of our own clients received notice that their products had been chosen – you can imagine the pride we felt.
We hope you can forgive us if we crow just a bit about the products under the DRS ‘umbrella’ that have earned their place in the pantheon of other great GOOD DESIGNS:
LAUFEN’s ILBAGNOALESSI One TUNA Washbasin
LAUFEN’s ILBAGNOALESSI One TUNA Washbasin
Who wouldn’t love working with a client who not only has amazing design sensibilities but also enough of a sense of fun to name a product after a fish? LAUFEN’s TUNA washbasin, borrowing from the graceful curves of its namesake, is an imaginative and timeless piece that holds just the right touch of sensuousness and eccentricity combined in its sleek and contemporary design. TUNA offers a marriage of soft and fluid lines, a clean white finish, and an ample counter – it’s yet another example of LAUFEN’s creative use of ceramic design. And did we mention that it’s named after a fish? We did, didn’t we? (more…)
