The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) unveiled the winners of the 2011 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) program. This year the competition received a record amount of entries breaking the 2,000 mark since it began 31 years ago. Out of 524 finalists, 27 were honored with the Gold Award, while 68 received the Silver Award and 96 won the Bronze Award. Additionally, the program received a record amount of student entries. IDSA will announce the Best in Show, Curator's Choice, People's Choice and the Responsibility Awards at the IDEA ceremony on Sept. 17 at its 2011 International Conference in New Orleans.
The top corporate winners were Samsung of South Korea and Microsoft claiming seven awards and Belkin and GE Healthcare claiming three.
Among design firms: IDEO received 11 awards, fuseproject captured nine awards, Continuum earned seven, Teague received five, frog and Ziba secured four, RKS captured three, and Smart Design, NewDealDesign and Karten Design received two awards. The Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, Calif., topped this year's list of college wins with six awards.
"The IDEA program is considered by many as the 'Oscars' of design competitions because the judging process is rigorous and judged by the experts in their field," said IDSA's CEO Clive Roux. "This year our Best in Show award reveals another powerful story about the growing link between design and responsibility."
The 2011 IDEA jury, made up of 20 international design experts coming from design consultancies, corporations and universities, spent weeks previewing entries online and two-and-a-half days of face-to-face evaluation and debate at The Henry Ford. Judging criteria focused on eight areas of industrial design excellence: innovation; benefit to the user; benefit to society; benefit to the client; visual appeal and appropriate aesthetics; usability, emotional factors and unmet needs for the design research category; and internal factors, methods, strategic value and implementation for the design strategy category.
The awards were chosen from the following industry and design categories: commercial and industrial products, communication tools, computer equipment, design strategy, entertainment, environments, home living, interactive product experiences, leisure and recreation, medical and scientific products, office and productivity, packaging and graphics, personal accessories, research, service design, student designs and transportation. Entries came from 39 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Botswana, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Iran,Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Kingdom and the United States.