The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has announced finalists and Lifetime Achievement Award winner of the 2018 DesignEuropa Awards. "Choosing eight finalists from so many excellent entries was a challenging but rewarding task for our jury," stated jury Chairwoman, Luisa Bocchietto. "The finalist designs all contribute to their companies' performance and represent good intellectual property rights management, as well as having high levels of aesthetic value."
Hartmut Esslinger, German industrial designer with a global career spanning five decades, has been named the recipient of the DesignEuropa Lifetime Achievement Award. Perhaps best known for his creation of the 'Snow White' design language for Apple in the 1980s, Mr Esslinger's motto has always been 'form follows emotion.'
From his early days creating products for Wega and Sony to his close collaboration with Steve Jobs at Apple, Esslinger blazed a trail as one of the world's most influential and innovative design professionals. The design studio he founded in 1969, frog, is now an international firm with a presence in 11 countries. Apart from Apple, he has worked with a huge array of international clients, including Disney, Siemens, Lufthansa and Louis Vuitton. After retiring from frog in 2006, he dedicated his time to teaching, latterly at the University of Shanghai in China. He has, in the assessment of the DesignEuropa Awards jury: "changed thinking on design, which has impacted the whole world."