Red Dot CEO Peter Zec had plenty of cause to mention Taiwan at this year’s Red Dot Communication Design Award ceremony on Friday, with four Taiwanese winning “Best of the Best” awards.
At the ceremony at the Berlin Concert House in Germany, Zec said that of the 6,812 entries from 49 countries competing in 21 categories, only 72 were given the Best of the Best accolade, while another 503 won Red Dot awards.
Every entry was stringently evaluated by a 24-member international jury and fewer than one of 10 were awarded prestigious Red Dots.
The only countries to claim more Best of the Best titles than Taiwan were Germany and South Korea.
Two of the four Taiwanese winning entries were designed by Asia University: “Endless” in the packing design category and “Illustration for Jiji Thousand Banana Territory” in the illustrations category.
“Endless” is an integrated packing case created for the HTC Sensation XL cellphone communicating the concept of “small phone, big world” through comic illustrations revealed when the case is unfolded.
“Illustration for Jiji Thousand Banana Territory” consists of knife-carved illustrations of four folk tales related to bananas grown in mountainous parts of Jiji Township (集集), Nantou County.
The remaining Best of the Best winners from Taiwan came in the packing design and editorial publishing category.
“Tree in a Bottle,” designed by Hair O’right International Corp, is a biodegradable shampoo bottle touted as the world’s first capable of being used to grow trees through the Acacia seeds included within it.
“Origami for Environmental Conservation,” designed by Shu-Te University, is a set of 20 animals made from folded paper based on unique species found in Taroko National Park in Hualien.
The work comes with an instruction manual detailing how to fold the paper, as well as an introduction and description of the 20 selected species.
The designer hopes that the product will help users better understand 3D spatial concepts and become more aware of Taiwan’s natural environment.
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