CMD Product Design & Innovation celebrating after receiving the Australian International Design Award of the Year / courtesy Australian International Design Awards (a division of Standards Australia)
Tom Felber for ceative face Magazine
Last Friday night the winners of 2008 Australian International Design Awards, Award for Excellence in Sustainable Design and the Australian Design Award - Dyson Student Award have been announced. Flaik, an Australian-designed snow-sports performance tracking device has taken out the top prize in this year's Australian International Design Awards. While the Slide Connect G2 Emergency Exit Sign, co-designed by Formwerx Product Design Consultants and Bluesky Design Group for Legrand Australia, won the Award for Excellence in Sustainable Design. And a Compact Crutch walking aid designed by the South Australian student Michael Ng has taken Gold in the 2008 Australian Design Award - Dyson Student Award.
Flaik is designed by a Queensland design consultancy, CMD Product Design & Innovation. It is a small performance tracking device specifically designed for skiing and snowboarding enthusiasts. Using GPS and GSM/GPRS technology, the device monitors and records a user's location, speed, distance, altitude and airtime, automatically uploading data in real-time to an online portal. From the Flaik portal (www.flaik.com), users can view their data, compare statistics with other users, build a profile and history, chat to others online and check their current location or the location of other users. The judges were particularly struck by the originality behind Flaik and the attention to detail given to all aspects of product design from cultural, market and visual appeal right down to the packaging. "Flaik is an exciting product with a completely new visual language that doesn't follow trends or existing ideas," said Mr Bruce Claxton, Senior Director, Design Integration, Motorola and one of this year's judges.
The Slide Connect G2 Emergency Exit Sign is a world-first emergency lighting and exit sign system which uses a single, high brightness, long life LED with custom designed optics. Judges were impressed with the overall quality and ‘smartness' of design, in particular the ease at which the energy-saving system can be retrofitted to existing Legrand exit signs. "The opportunity to potentially retrofit nearly a million existing emergency exit lights without replacing the whole unit offers significant greenhouse emissions savings which can't be overlooked," said Kel Dummett, Manager of Sustainability Victoria's Sustainable Design Program and one of the judges.
The student inventor Michael Ng from the University of South Australia has been chosen by the panel of Australian design industry experts, as this year's stand out Australian industrial design student talent. His Compact Crutch walking aid, which solves the simple problem of crutches being uncomfortable. Anyone who has had to rely on crutches will agree their rigidity creates an unnatural and uncomfortable walking movement. For short rehabilitation periods it's bearable; but for long-term users who rely on walking aides for their daily independence, crutches are in need of some serious design modifications. Michael Ng's Compact Crutch walking aide was conceived to improve comfort and delay the onset of some severe health effects associated with the long-term use of elbow crutches including wrist tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome caused by repetitive jarring.
The Silver prize was awarded to Alicia Mintzes from the University of New South Wales for Sharpsafe - a community needle disposal bin for injection drug users that utilises material and technology innovations to improve safety aspects, and aesthetic street furniture language to enable a better, non-threatening, fit in public spaces. The Bronze prize was awarded to Brook Tait-Styles from the University of Technology Sydney for PV-1 Exhaust Fume Filtration Unit; a new and innovative portable unit to protect mechanics and at- home car enthusiasts from potentially harmful exhaust fumes. The PV-1 filters particle emissions from the air and converts them into less dangerous, naturally-occurring substances.
