BraunPrizeBlog

While it seems that the BraunPrize 2007 has just been finished today I have the pleasure to share with you some details on the next and 17th iteration of the BraunPrize in 2009!

Attentive visitors of this blog and those of you who watched the videos of the BraunPrize jury 2007 members have understood that responsibility, ’socialness’ and sustainability have been some of the key dimensions for successful design.

Therefore I’m more than happy that the theme for the BraunPrize 2009 will be:

“Envision Conscious Design“

In March 2008 Braun is inviting Design students from across the globe to participate in the 17th BraunPrize. The only formal constraint in order to participate is that your examination must not be longer than 2 years ago!

In April 2008 Braun will send some thousand specification documents to Design Universities, Design Institutes and Design Agencies from across the globe. From there prospect participants will have the opportunity to submit their entries up to January 31st, 2009. As always participation is FREE and you will not be charged anything! As with the last three BraunPrize iterations you can also submit your entry via online upload!

While participation is free there is quite a few to be earned: The total prize award this time is Euro 36.000 of which the BraunPrize 2009 winner alone gets Euro 12.000 and a paid internship at the Braun Design department! The remaining finalists each get Euro 5.000 as well. In total I think that’s a tempting offer, right?

Finally what might also interest you is the composition of the BraunPrize 2009 jury members. Again Braun has been able to attract a small, but highly respected group of five jury members. Beside Peter Schneider, Director Corporate Design at Braun and Rainer Silbernagel, Director Engineering and Quality Institute Kronberg there are traditionally three external members as well. This time they come from Norway, Japan and Germany:

First there is Anna Kirah, Design Antropologist, Norway. Then we have Kazuo Tanaka, President of GK Design Group Inc., Tokyo, Japan on board. And last, but not least Braun continues to invite former BraunPrize winners. This time it’s Florian Seiffert, Professor for Product Design, Fachhochschule Mainz and first BraunPrize Winner of 1968.

After all I hope that I’ll be able to share impressions from the BraunPrize 2009 here on this blog as well. So stay tuned, download the according participation documents and keep in touch with us via BraunPrize Blog.

Last but not least I’d like to finish my report about the BraunPrize 2007 forum with referring to the head of Braun Design: Peter Schneider.

First of all let me state that Peter is far more relaxed than it might appear here in the video. If you meet him in person he truly is an energetic, curious while still a critical person. During the jury meetings I’ve always experienced him as an experienced juror which is no wonder since this has been his 8th BraunPrize jury he has participated in!

What Peter emphasises and illustrates in his forum address is the relation between Braun Design principles and their reflection in the BraunPrize itself. For him design is most innovative if it is able to generate value for the user in combination with design quality. And for sure this is also the key premise for successfully competing in the BraunPrize as well.

However he has lots more of advice to share. While one might think that submissions that are close to Braun’s product lines are being favoured Peter explains that this is not the case at all. For him design with the people/user in mind and design that is embedded in our everyday lives (work, health, recreation, leisure, sports, family, etc.) is what the BraunPrize is about. And as you will understand Donn Koh’s submission has addressed most of these criteria very well.

Anyway if you want to get a better understanding what it takes to make it to the last round of future BraunPrize entries listen to Peter’s speech! Any while I’m at it: Hopefully see, hear, read about you here on this blog when it comes to: BraunPrize 2009!

From my very own perspective I find it a great ‘unspoken rule’ that the BraunPrize jury needs to comprise at least one woman. Moni Wolf filled her role in a perfect fashion as she combined freshness of attitude with insights from technology & innovation (facilitated by her responsibilities at her employer Motorola) paired with curiosity on emerging future trends.

Therefore it’s no wonder that in her address Moni emphasised the intelligent and very often seamless use of technology in the various entries. But most importantly she highlights that from her perspective this has not been done for the sake of technology itself, but rather for solving complex problems with quite simple, yet intelligent and effective solutions.

According to her view from the very beginning submissions & designs that made offers to relevant, implementable solutions while still keeping aesthetics in mind made it smoothly to the next stage of the judging process.

In any case she has lots more of advice. So listen to her forum address:

Next in line has been Dr. Mark Breitenberg from Art Center College, Pasadena/US. In his adorable way of articulating complex issues via the selected use of the English language Mark thanked Braun for the perfect organisation of the competition as well as for applying the high quality standards of Braun Design to the execution of the BraunPrize competition itself.

One of his key remarks has been that as a member of the ICSID board he is visiting a lot of design schools around the globe. Accordingly he is pretty much impressed how well design students use their skills in order to not only solve everyday problems, but also more and more issues that address our quality of life as well as environmental issues.

For him quite a few BraunPrize entrants (he estimates almost 50%) demonstrated that there is a great sense of social and ethical responsibility reflected in their thinking and designs. However listen to him yourself:

Well what remains to be shared here are the short statements the BraunPrize jury members addressed at the audience of the BraunPrize forum.

I’d like to start with Benjamin Holch. The jury membership of Benjamin this year has been a sort of novum for the BraunPrize since Benjamin was a BraunPrize Winner himself back in 2003. Accordingly he has experienced the process of judging from a slightly different angle as it has been only four years since he stood on the panel presenting his very own entry as well.

In his short address he openly shares his memories from his participation in 2003 as well as his observations from the perspective of a 2007 jury member.

From my very own perspective I’ve experienced his participation in the jury as very stimulating and valuable as he seemed to act as a kind of mediator between students/participants and the more distant design professionals of the jury.

So this video drop-out took slightly longer than expected, but no worries I won’t bother you with any details here ;-) In any case: Thanks for your patience and understanding!

So as the title suggests: What is left to be said about the BraunPrize 2007? Well when you’ve been able to look behind the scenes of the BraunPrize as I’ve used to than for sure there is stuff for a lot of postings … On the other hand this blog has been our first experiment with this medium in this context so for this iteration of the BraunPrize I’d like to focus on sharing the most interesting basics in order to give you a good overall impression on the character and scope of such an event.

Therefore any report about the BraunPrize 2007 finale would be incomplete without sharing the final jury statements with you. It’s part of the BraunPrize tradition that the jurors give a short wrap-up speech about their overall impressions from being a member of the BraunPrize jury.

Accordingly I will finally present each of the 3 BraunPrize 2007 jury members here for you and finish this BraunPrize blog (at least for this iteration) with the keynote given by Peter Schneider, Head of Braun Design and chairman of the jury.

So, enjoy this last chapter of the BraunPrize 2007 finale!

It came to my notice recently that the hoster of our video files vpod.tv has experienced some problems while upgrading their hardware infrastructure ;-(

As a consequence of this it seems that the most recent videos I’ve uploaded do not seem to be restored yet. From their blog I understand that they are aware of this problem and seem to work on it. While this blog entry is from November 9th it seems that the problems seems to be more complex than they’ve anticipated. However from being able to play some video files I’ve uploaded this summer it seems that they restore videos from oldest to most recent.

So please be patient for some more days. If the situation remains like this for another week I’ll try to find another option for hosting and sharing the videos. Thanks for this and my sincere apologies for the inconvenience!

And last, but not least here we have the BraunPrize winner presentation delivered by: Donn Koh!

I must say and as already touched in an earlier posting that Donn surprised me in many ways. When we’ve met for the first time at the “get in touch” dinner the evening before the BraunPrize forum I found him more or less jet-lagged as he’s just arrived from Korea and still needed to do some fine tuning to his presentation.

So during the morning rehearsal he had to simultaneously work on his presentation as well as participating in the discussions about the presentations of his colleagues. However the atmosphere turned out to be so cooperative that the rest of the group even helped him with hints and suggestions.

After all Donn developed the real final kick to his presentation during the lunch break before the ceremony when he added some great films about an early prototype of his chair in a kids hospital as well showing flash animations on the technical functions of the up and down aid mechanism built into the chair. By doing so he thoughtfully illustrated what the jury described as follows:

“LeapFrog’ not only supports the physical development, but also the independence and self-confidence of the child. It reinterprets a ‘painfully’ medical appearance with a product that appears to be caring and playful.”

So at the end of the day it has been no surprise that Donn turned out to be the winner of the finale. My hot tip was Franziskas entry, but as I’ve understood several jurors later on Donn’s concept addressed a broader and more “serious” range of issues. Later on in the Q&A part of the forum (a video will be shared later on as well) one questioner even suggested to transfer the idea of the concept to elderly/handicapped people as well.

In total and from my very own perspective I wouldn’t conclude that the BraunPrize can only be won with “serious” designs positioned in the area of medical health care. On the contrary the selection of the four finalists’ designs by the jury illustrated the variety of topics and objects “worth” to be a “BraunPrize Finalist”!

So now please welcome on stage: Donn Koh!

Technorati Tags: Braun, Braun Design, BraunPrize, BraunPrize 2007

Even though last in row in terms of the finalists’ presentations I’d like to present Bruno Peral Bey prior to this times’ winner Donn Koh.

However first of all it can’t be overheard that Bruno is actually Spanish origin; and I say that in the most positive way. Similar to people from other southern European countries like Portugal, France, Italy or Greece (just to name a few) their local accent really adds a positive, individual and mostly cosmopolitan flavor to such events.

On the other hand one might not underestimate the number of southern American participants from Universities and Organizations (like ICSID President-Elect Prof. Carlos Hinrichsen from Chile) who came across the Atlantic Ocean just for this event! I think it has only been during my last summer vacation ever since I’ve listened to so many people speaking Spanish in a single room ;-)

In any case Bruno’s project has actually been one which from a superficial perspective you might consider as well-known: “A pot to cook”! Period. However on a second view you will see the ingenuity of the object since it “… allows for the preparation and enjoyment of meals from different cultures, with an emphasis on the communal aspect of food preparation.”

And while talking about “communal/community” the jury absolutely touched the most relevant aspect of Bruno’s entry: the socializing around the object is as important, if not even more important, than the object itself. This by the way is also one of the key ideas around Franziska’s triops camera!

So, prospective BraunPrize participants: Listen to Bruno’s show about “Mengin” and learn about the power of socializing ;-)

Technorati Tags: Braun, Braun Design, BraunPrize, BraunPrize 2007

Actually I’ve found that Lena and David really had to deal with the considerable burden of opening the finalists presentation part of the BraunPrize forum. However I found that they’ve done a great job which prepared the stage well for Franziska whose presentation followed straight away.

During the morning rehearsal we’ve identified that the opening of a 10 minutes presentation is to be considered as a very important element of a dramaturgy. Accordingly we’ve discussed several approaches how to start with a smart and individual approach.

So Franziska decided to take a picture of the audience prior to starting her presentation! Among others the aim of her approach was to demonstrate how tricky it is to be both a photographer and object of a photo at the same time. During the time to remain she lively explained and illustrated in which ways her submission titled “triops” resolves this paradox.

In terms of “adding personal flavor” her presentation was a good example on how to create a case from a very “personal” perspective in contrast to Lena and David who presented in a more “objective/neutral” fashion. So in case you’d plan to submit your design for the BraunPrize 2009 watch the videos closely and learn from the successful ones ;-)

Technorati Tags: Braun, Braun Design, BraunPrize, BraunPrize 2007