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Created by design brand Hulger and designed by Samuel Wilkinson, the looping, low-energy CFL bulb beat over ninety other shortlisted designs across architecture, product, fashion, transport, graphic, furniture and interactive design.

The Plumen 001 and all the shortlisted designs remain on show at the Design Museum until 7 August.

Top photograph is by Luke Hayes.

More about Plumen »
More about the awards »
Listen to our podcast with chair of the jury Stephen Bayley »

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Winner 2010: Min-Kyu Choi	Winner 2009 Shepard Fairey	Winner 2008: Yves Béhar

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winners 2011 appeared first on Dezeen.

London designer Min-Kyu Choi was awarded the Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award 2010 for his Folding Plug at a ceremony at the Design Museum in London last night.

Min-Kyu Choi designed the product while studying at the Royal College of Art. See our earlier story about the project here.

All the shortlisted projects (see our earlier story) remain on show at the museum until 6 June. See the seven category winners here.

Above: jury chair Antony Gormley and Min-Kyu Choi

See also:

Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award winner 2009: Shepard Fairey’s Obama Poster
Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2008: Yves Béhar's One Laptop Per Child project

Photographs are by Luke Hayes.

Here are some more details from the Design Museum:

British student’s elegant reinterpretation of the UK plug wins coveted international design award

British student, Min-Kyu Choi from London, has won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2010, for his elegant reinterpretation of the humble plug, beating over 90 international nominees in the process. Jury Chair, Antony Gormley, presented him with the award at a gala dinner held at the Design Museum.

The Folding Plug was chosen from the seven category winners as the most compelling and progressive design of the last 12 months. The jury panel consisted of artist Antony Gormley, designer Tom Dixon, Editor of Icon magazine Justin McGuirk, designer Morag Myerscough, Style Director of Grazia magazine Paula Reed, editor of Wired magazine David Rowan and writer and broadcaster Janet Street-Porter.
Antony Gormley comments ‘Thought-through, responsive and modest, the folding plug shows how intelligent, elegant and inventive design can make a difference to everyone’s life.’

Min-Kyu Choi’s inspiration came from having to carry around the world’s largest plug (UK pin plug) with the MacBook Air, the world's thinnest laptop. In creating a plug which could fold flat for easy transportation, Choi received much praise on showcasing the plug at the Royal College of Art’s graduate show in 2009, with a brilliant and seemingly obvious improvement to a product that had changed little since its inception in 1946.

Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum comments ‘It’s great to see such a practical but elegant demonstration of what design can do to make everyday life so much better. Min-Kyu Choi is a designer just setting out on his career and he clearly has a great future ahead of him.’

The folding plug and all of this year’s shortlisted designs are on show at the Design Museum, due to the overwhelming demand the exhibition has been extended and will now run through to 31 October.

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Design of the Year Award 2010 appeared first on Dezeen.

Category winners announced for the 2010 Brit Insurance Design Awards

Chair of the Jury, Antony Gormley and the 2010 panel select their category winners with the overall winner to be announced at the Design Museum on 16 March.

London 5 March 2010: The seven category winners of the Brit Insurance Design Awards 2010 are announced today. Collectively they celebrate everyday design, reflecting international trends, current themes of sustainability and social enablement. Winners originate from Chile, China, Netherlands, UK and USA.

The winners include Monterrey Housing, a new model for social housing in Mexico, a project which was first trialed in Chile. The E430 Electric Aircraft, the first of its kind which produces zero emissions; and Grassworks a beautiful flat pack furniture kit made of sustainable bamboo which requires no drills or glue.

British designer, Alexander McQueen, was selected as winner of the Fashion category and jury member Paula Reed, Style Director of Grazia commented ‘The video presentation of McQueen's last show is one of the most compelling pieces in the exhibition. […]The impressiveness simply compounds the enormity of his loss.’

The seven Brit Insurance category winners are:

• Brit Insurance Architecture Award 2010: Monterrey Housing, Mexico. By Elemental. Chile.
• Brit Insurance Fashion Award 2010: Alexander McQueen Spring / Summer ’10 and Spring / Summer Catwalk presentation Plato’s Atlantis. UK
• Brit Insurance Furniture Award 2010: Grassworks. By Jair Straschnow. Netherlands.
• Brit Insurance Graphic Award 2010: The Newspaper Club. By Ben Terrett, Russell Davies and Tom Taylor. UK
• Brit Insurance Interactive Award 2010: The EyeWriter. By members of Free Art and Technology, openFrameworks, Graffiti Research La, The Ebeling Group and Tony Quan. USA
• Brit Insurance Product Award 2010: Folding Plug. By Min-Kyu Choi.UK
• Brit Insurance Transport Award 2010: E430 Electric Aircraft. By Yuneec International. China.

Antony Gormley Chair of the Jury comments "The seven winners provide a snapshot of some of the most outstanding designs from the past 12 months and reflect the important role design plays in improving people’s lives.”

The seven winning designs will now compete for the overall Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2010, to be announced at the Awards Ceremony at the Design Museum on 16 March. The winning entries, along with all the shortlisted designs, are on show at the Design Museum until 6 June.

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category winners announced appeared first on Dezeen.

American designer Shepard Fairey's Obama Poster has been awarded the Brit Insurance Design of the Year award at the Design Museum in London.

The Blog Vote was awarded to Magno Wooden Radio, manufactured by locals in Java, Indonesia, and designed by Singgih S. Kartono.

The winners were announced at the Design Museum yesterday, where an exhibition of all the shortlisted designs is on show until 14 June.

Here's some more information from the Design Museum:

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Brit Insurance Design Award 2009 Announced
Obama Poster, Shepard Fairey

Iconic poster receives official recognition through prestige of international design award

Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster has triumphed in a shortlist of 90 other designs to become Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2009. Chosen as the most innovative and forward thinking design from the past 12 months, Alan Yentob announced the winning design at a gala awards dinner hosted by Naomi Cleaver at the Design Museum.

The design was chosen from the seven category winners by a panel of judges including Alan Yentob, Paola Antonelli, Karen Blincoe, Peter Cook, Sarah Mower and Yves Béhar. The panel commented, “If ever there were to be a ‘The Poster of the Year’, the Obama Poster would be it. The US election was a watershed in contemporary history and this poster demonstrates the power of communicating ideas and aspirations from grass-root level. Just as the presidential candidate's campaign speeches recaptured the lost art of oratory, so this poster breathed new life into a form that had lost its purpose. Fairey's poster came not from a marketing campaign, but as a self initiated fund raising campaign. The poster did its job by becoming a collector's item. More than that it’s encapsulated the mood of its time.”

The Obama poster was nominated by design expert Patrick Burgoyne for the Graphics category. As a reputable US street artist famed for his propaganda style artwork and fly postering, Fairey created limited edition works to sell and raise awareness for Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign.

The poster has become a lasting testament of the success of the Obama campaign, as well as an iconic symbol of history. Patrick Burgoyne said, “It seems sure to be one of the defining images of the US Presidential campaign [as well as] an example of how designers can get involved in political campaigns in a meaningful way – sales of his poster have raised over $400,000.”

Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum said: “The Obama poster is a reminder of how extensively the design world impacts our everyday life. The poster has become an international emblem of recent history; I am delighted that it has won this year’s Brit Insurance Design Award and received rightful recognition.”

The Blog Vote, which was introduced this year to encourage public participation, generated a different conclusion as to who should win this year. With 7,312 people voting, the dominant winner was the Magno Wooden Radio in the Product category.

The Obama poster, along with the rest of the shortlist, is currently on show at the Design Museum until 14 June.

More about Brit Insurance Design of the Year awards:

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Exhibition podcast

Category winners

Full shortlist

Yves Béhar wins Design of the Year 2008

Category winners 2008

Shortlist 2008

Design Museum drops Designer of Year show

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The museum's 2007 programme, published last month, does not include the event, which has been held each year since 2003 and which was one of the flagship projects of former director Alice Rawsthorn.

"There is no Designer of the Year in it's previous format," said a Design Museum spokesperson. "The format is being rethought and developed at the moment, and we will relaunch later in 2007, but there will be no accompanying exhibition."

Sudjic is understood to be considering relaunching the award as a prize for young designers or for international designers.

The £25,000 prize was set up to reward "the UK designer or design team whose work made the biggest contribution to design" in a given year. The inaugural award was won by Apple Computer designer Jonathan Ive, while interactive designer Daniel Brown won in 2004.

Controversy dogged the award in 2005, when it was won by "public sector design reformer" Hillary Cottam, who developed innovative procurement methods for schools and prisons but who, by her own admission, was not a designer. The ensuing row is thought to have contributed to Rawsthorn's departure from the museum in early 2006.

In 2006 the award went to Jamie Hewlett, the artist behind virtual pop group Gorillaz.

Highlights of the museum's programme for 2007 include shows dedicated to architect Zaha Hadid, fashion designer Matthew Williamson and graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook.

http://www.designmuseum.org

Background:

Dead end at the Design Museum (from the Evening Standard, 08.03.05)

Observer critic to take charge at the Design Museum (from the Guardian, 23.03.06)

Behind the scenes at the museum (Stephen Bayley writing in The Independent, 17.11.06 - NB you have to pay to view the full article)

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