BraunPrizeBlog

I’m already looking forward to Wednesday & Thursday this week when I’ll meet the BraunPrize Jury 2007 for the first time in Kronberg at the corporate headquarters of Braun and Braun Design.

While preparing myself for some nice conversations & interviews I’ve stumbled across a short series of Q&A with the jury members to be found on the BraunPrize website.

Just to remind you who this year’s jury members are, here we go. While you can go through the complete interviews here I’ve allowed myself to pick and list the most interesting (according to my perception) quotes for you:

Moni Wolf, Director of Design at Motorola, iDEN, Plantation, USA:

“My main inspiration is born out of the love to dealing with problems. Having fun with discovering them, defining them and trying my best to resolving them cleverly. Multidisciplinary and multi cultural teams are a lot of fun and offer a great deal of inspiration and new ideas/viewpoints.”

Dr. Mark Breitenberg, Dean of Undergratuate Education at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, USA:

“My definition of good design is design that solves a problem that leading to a better quality of life. By “quality of life” I include not just social issues but also the business of everyday life as well as the importance of beauty and pleasure.”

Benjamin Holch, Designer/Design analyst, Frogdesign Europe GmbH, and BraunPrize winner 2003:

“The BraunPrize has a special role because its participants are totally free in what they want to send in. If you see how many students and young designers from all over the world send in their designs and ideas this year you can clearly see the enjoyment which these people have in selling themselves, in competing against the others.”

Peter Schneider, Director Corporate Design at Braun and chairman of the BraunPrize Jury:

“Competition is part of our life. Not only designers should be trained to compete with others and assess their capabilities. But they should consciously look for which Design Prize they apply for. Some of the organizers are interested in grabbing new ideas in a cheap way. The ICSID endorsement is a valuable “quality mark” for open design competitions.”

Udo Milutzki, Vice President Engineering and PPM at GTM Kronberg:

“Don’t stop learning. Young designers should search and apply new technologies and materials, strive to reach clear forms and easy to use products; this makes them invaluable. The interplay between design and engineering is very evident to create innovative products.”

Stay tuned for the next couple of days and check back soon for my jury session blogging! I’ll also check where to find the live webcam on the BraunPrize site …