Today, the 2022 Golden Pin Concept Design Award (GPCDA) announces the list of Design Mark winners as well as the candidates for the Final Selection! This year saw a record number of submissions—5,114 works from 29 countries/regions worldwide. After the First and Secondary Selections in July and August respectively, 43 submissions from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Russia, Germany, and Turkey stood out among fierce competition to win the coveted GPCDA Design Mark. Among them, 19 submissions will now be vying for the top honor—Best of Golden Pin Concept Design Award—in the Final Selection. Which three submissions will take home the NT$400,000 grand prize? Stay tuned to find out!
GPCDA encourages designers to seek innovation and commissions juries of domestic and foreign design heavyweights and professionals to discover fresh ideas and solutions every year. Among the Design Mark recipients this year are numerous proposals with great commercial potential and marketability that boldly address lifestyle, social, and environmental issues.
The Highlights of the 2022 Design Mark Winners
1. Sunset Ocean Lamp
- Designer(s): Yu-Chun Hsiao, Chia-Yi Yen, Guo-Wei Shyu & Hung-Chi Chen (Taiwan)
- Category: Product Design
Featuring waterfall-textured glass and a warm golden light, the Sunset Ocean Lamp series faithfully recreates the oceanside scenery at various times of day, brining Nature and its tranquil, relaxing atmosphere into your home.
There are three lamps in this series: “Sparkling Ocean” (the right one) presents ocean waves sparkling through different angles of light irradiation on the glass; “Gradient Sky” (the left one) uses gradient patterned glass to change the brightness of the lamp while moving the light, presenting the scene of the sunrise and sunset. “Sunset Ocean” (the middle one) through the reflection and refraction of light on glass to create a whole scenery of the sunset at the seaside.
2. “YEMOJA” – The Guardian of Water Sources
- Designer(s): Han-Yu Lai (Taiwan)
- Category: Spatial Design
Made from traditional materials and bamboo work, YEMOJA is a freshwater device that captures moisture in the atmosphere, turns it into water droplets, and store them in a container at the bottom. The device features low-cost, readily available raw materials and can be a game changer for places where freshwater resources and basic infrastructure are lacking.
3. ANIMAL CLOTHING
- Designer(s): Vikoria Ivanova (Russia)
- Category: Communication Design
The ANIMAL CLOTHING catalogue is not your regular fashion catalogue. Instead of monetary value, every item’s price is presented in the number of animals killed in order to produce it. Such an intense, visceral design concept tells the cruel story behind the fur and leather industry.
4. Kids behind the Doors
- Designer(s): Akino Nishio (Japan)
- Category: Communication Design
Drawing from the designer’s personal experience, this seemingly unsophisticated yet visually imaginative design concept of stitched images is a representation of the vague childhood memories that occasionally resurface in our daily life and imagination.
The Highlights of the Shortlisted Entries for Final Selection
Among the 43 Design Mark recipients this year, the Jury of Secondary Selection has also selected 19 submissions for the final selection to compete for the Best of GPCDA honor.
5. Kokãir – Desktop Cooking Fume Extractor
- Designer(s): Hong-Ta Shen, Yan-Ton Chen, Tsung-Yu Wu & Yu-Ting Chang (Taiwan)
- Category: Product Design
Kokãir is a compact desktop cooking fume extractor that can be placed anywhere and easily stowed when not in use. It shortens the fume-extracting distance for better efficiency and heats up oil vapor for quick removal of grease. It is perfect for apartment renters or owners of smaller houses who nevertheless enjoy home-made meals.
6. IRIS
- Designer(s): Edwind Tan Yi Fong (Singapore)
- Category: Product Design
Inspired by Lego building blocks, IRIS is a modular camera system optimized for media content creation. By rethinking the entire filming equipment arsenal of a modern content creator, IRIS aims to minimize waste and maximize the user’s backpack space by merging essential filming equipment and digital functions within a single product family, with the camera unit being the nucleus of the system.
Through the integration of seamless top-down charging, IRIS managed to eliminate the use of charging cables, creating a sustainable product eco-system that enables seamless equipment transitions, battery longevity and compact equipment storage, ideal for long outdoor shoots. With the absence of charging cables, charging and equipment connectivity is standardized, increasing the product’s lifespan and reducing waste sent to the landfill.
7. Embrace – Seatbelt for the Pregnant
- Designer(s): Xiao-Wen Xie & Jun-Zhe Qiu (China)
- Category: Product Design
Featuring bionic spiderweb-like interior that, once pulled out and extended, can be molded in to any shape to fit all body types, the Embrace seatbelt is a comfortable alternative for pregnant drivers.
8. Urban Air Sports Park / Community-Based Shared Sports Bridges
- Designer(s): Han-Yu Lai & Wei-Qun Cai (Taiwan)
- Category: Spatial Design
This project uses raw materials from abandoned high-ways, and the design concept envisions an elevated “air sports park” at a downtown area as a new form of venue for citizen activities. The park will feature numerous green corridors. In this design, trees, green roofs, and vegetation can help reduce urban heat island effects by shading building surfaces, deflecting radiation from the sun, and releasing moisture into the atmosphere.
Famous advertising executive, the former CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Greater China, Shenan Chuang, who served on the jury for both the Secondary and Final Selections, praises the overall quality of submissions this year, especially several aesthetically masterful lifestyle design concepts proposed by Taiwanese teams, whose creative energy will surely reach even more disciplines in the future. For those facing the Final Selection, Chuang notes that the key selection factor lies in whether each designer is able to expound on the intent, necessity, vision, and future potential of their design through skillful storytelling during the presentation.
According to Rock Wang, Head Designer at Studio Qiao, and Alice Wang of the eponymous Alice Wang Design, many of the submissions shortlisted this year feature outstanding practical and functional design solutions, and they hope to see more experimental or emotionally-focused works in the future. Dentsu Mcgarrybowen Inc.’s CCO Alice Chou emphasized the depth of insight, new perspectives through creativity, applicability, and aesthetics of details when evaluating each design concept.
Speaking from the marketability and crowdfunding perspective, Backer-Founder.com CEO Tahan Lin says he discovered many works with great development and market potential. Lin also mentioned—it is concepts that are simple and readily available, and the concepts yet grand and visionary that people look forward to and are thus willing to support its actualization through funding—it is such concepts that capture his attention.
19 Submissions Vying for the Top Honor at the Final Selection
The 2022 Golden Pin Concept Design Award will hold the final selection online on September 23rd, where the 19 candidates will pitch their concepts in person to a jury of international design experts. The three winners of the Best of Golden Pin Concept Design Award will receive a cash prize of NT$400,000 (approx. USD$13,330) respectively!
The finalist will be announced in October and the winners will be revealed at the award ceremony held in early December in Taipei. For the latest news on the Golden Pin Concept Design Award, please visit the official website and follow us on social media.
Follow this link for the Design Mark Winners List & the Final Selection Shortlist
https://www.goldenpin.org.tw/en/download/
