Red Dot Awards Honor "Quality" Design

All products will be on display at the Red Dot Museum in Germany this summer.

Staff -- Interior Design, 3/31/2006

Annually since 1955, the Essen Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, a design museum located in Essen, Germany, has selected what it deems to be outstanding high-quality design from an international field. For the 2006 awards, known as the Red Dot Design Awards, more than 2,000 entries from 41 nations were submitted in the categories of Product Design, Communication Design, and Design Concept. A total of 485 entries received the Red Dot quality label, but only 36 received rare Red Dot: Best of the Best for Highest Design Quality accolades.

The museum took “the creative imperative” to heart when doling out awards, referring to the 2006 theme at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Many companies have been successfully investing in innovation and design for a long time in order to stand out from the competition and to convey their brand values,” explains professor Dr. Peter Zec, initiator of the Red Dot Design Award and president of the international design association ICSID. “However, creativity by itself is not enough; the products also have to be of high quality. And it is also the task of design to communicate this quality.”

This year’s winners included bigwigs such as Droog, Poggenpohl, Grohe, and BMW, among hundreds of others. Best of Best award winners include LG Electronics, Apple, Duravit, Artmide, and more.

A special exhibition in the Red Dot Design Museum (located on the premises of the Zeche Zollverein world cultural heritage site in Essen) will display the award-winning products, June 27–July 23.