Judgment day – again! Gerhard was invited to be one of the jurors for the Computex Taipei design & innovation awards 2009, organized by iF design awards who have more info here. Ahh, design is so nice when you don’t have to do it by yourself. In total, about 150 products were handed in for selection and the jury was as tough as last year: only 20 products were awarded, while 5 out of those received a gold award. There was also an

extra award: a green prize for sustainable and environmental friendly products. However, the judges could not find any item that would match the criteria. We hope for improvements for next year...

As usual, the judging panel had most problems with the selection for the gaming category as these are products with completely different aesthetics than other categories and for a younger generation consumers. Still, one gaming PC enclosure got awarded. Well done. The overall selection of awarded products turned out to be an interesting mix with surprisingly few items from the big players. General trend: the pressure of low cost manufacturing continues, which could be seen throughout the range – the overall craftsmanship is decreasing due to cost issues.

The panel was headed by 'Mr. iF awards' himself, Ralph Wiegmann – Managing Director for iF. He was on a tough schedule and only stayed in Taipei for roughly 24 hours before heading on to Hong Kong and then Korea, where iF just set up a new office – the third one next the organizations in Germany and in Taiwan.

The 20 awarded products will be presented in an award ceremony at the Computex exhibition, starting June 1st. And by the way – you will find the rest of the products there as well, as all the entries to the design awards have to be exhibited at Computex.

Gerhard Seizer | onizou - idea nomads | on creative world tour
Gideon Loewy | Scandinavian Design Consultant Company | Denmark
Hiroaki Tanaka | GEO design |  Japan
Lawrence Weng  | ETM group | Taiwan
Marc Nagel | Pilotfish Inc. | Germany

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